Q School is an unforgiving gauntlet that everyone fears with utter dread. With good reason too.
Q School is an amateur snooker competition that Barry Hearn introduced in 2011. It consists of a series of play-off events through many BO7 matches. It is supposed to give all amateurs equal opportunities to win a professional tour card. In 2011, the initial group received a one-year card. From 2012, each player wins a two-year card.
Recently, Barry Hearn said that Q School “has proved the best and fairest way for players to qualify for the Tour.” But is it the fairest way to do this? With so many graduates of Q School, how many of them actually reach the Top 64 straightaway? Is Q School the best way of finding the best amateurs to turn into snooker professionals?
The Stats of Q School
Between 2011-2019, Q School has handed out 104 spots in total to join the main tour. 83 different players have qualified. Players from sixteen different nationalities have succeeded there that included Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland and Qatar. Most notably, Craig Steadman and Paul Davison have qualified via Q School on three separate occasions.
I have done some of my own number-crunching of all the Q School events between 2011-2017. At the time of publication, the fate of the 2018 Q School graduates are unconfirmed. Those who qualified via 2019 Q School are only one year into their tour card.
- There are ten instances out of 76 between 2011 – 2017 where players went straight into the Top 64, using their initial tour card awarded by Q School. The most famous names who have achieved this include David Gilbert, Michael Georgiou, Cao Yupeng and Robbie Williams.
- On the other hand, there are 66 instances (87%) where players failed to reach the Top 64, using their initial tour card awarded by Q School.
- But of those 66 instances, seventeen (26%) are immediately kept on via the Order of Merit and eventually reached the Top 64. The most famous names who have achieved this include Kurt Maflin, Chris Wakelin, Liam Highfield and Sam Baird.
Basically, there is a 13% chance of a player reaching the Top 64 using the initial one or two-year card after qualifying from Q School.
Providing Accessibility To All
The obvious plus in favour of Q School is that it is accessible to all. It is attractive to amateurs because it is cheap(ish) to enter with decent value for money. One pays £1,000 to play in three events. One’s nationality, age or gender doesn’t matter. If you can cough up the money, you are in and if you succeed there, it’s because you’re good enough. Its number of participants have increased almost every year. In 2011, 124 amateurs entered Q School. Last year, 218 signed on, which to date is the largest Q School turnout.
Look at last year’s winning group. The eldest graduates were 50-year-old Alex Borg and 49-year-old Peter Lines. Among the same crop, we also had 16-year-old Chinese duo Lei Peifan and Si Jiahui!
From a business point of view, it’s a no brainer. Last year 218 amateurs transferred a grand to participate in Q School. Ka-ching indeed.
Take The Opportunity With Both Hands
Anyway, Q School is supposed to be the massive test to how one can cut it being a snooker player. Considering how brutal and unforgiving the professional tour is, this is a toe in the water for most players. Everyone plays 6-7 matches per event to qualify. Each draw is completely random and every match is a BO7. Two-time qualifier Michael Georgiou said below:
The rewards are huge if one takes the opportunity. As mentioned before, there is a 13% chance of a Q School graduate reaching the Top 64 straightaway. The odds aren’t that bad, considering how tough the main tour is. Looking at the sportspeople who ‘made it’, many aspiring amateurs would want to follow them.
Michael Georgiou is currently the only Q School qualifier to win a ranking event. Since qualifying in 2011, David Gilbert competed in four ranking finals, stormed into the 2019 World Championship semi-finals and is currently among the best sixteen players in the world. Cao Yupeng reached two ranking finals. 2012 & 2017 graduate Martin O’Donnell is on the cusp of breaking through to the Top 32 for the first time.
This is aside from those Q School graduates who are eventually kept on via the European Order of Merit or via a One-Year ranking list.
But does Q School Constantly Bring Out The Best Players?
In short, no.
There are many reasons for this. The first reason is the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket. That pressure to do this at Q School must be monstrous. A player gets three chances to peak and if one fails all three, then that’s it till next season. The margins are so small, that this method isn’t always likely to bring out the best results. Ashley Hugill understands what competitors go through:
The second reason is the draw itself. To seed or rank a huge number of amateurs is impossible. It is completely random but random doesn’t always mean fair. There were instances where someone lost to the same opposite number twice within three events. This means that supposedly more talented individuals end up competing in the same draw quite often.
The third reason is that it doesn’t test a player’s all-round quality. Everyone knows that to be a great snooker player, talent alone isn’t enough. A player also needs to handle pressure and have a great safety and attacking game. I sometimes get the feeling that Q School produces those who are the best at endurance rather than the best and most consistent players.
Is There A Better Alternative?
The Q School has its pros and cons. Its concept is great but doesn’t consistently produce the best players. Is there another way to do this?
The alternative qualifying procedure is the Q Tour, which officially replaced The Challenge Tour earlier this month. Both Q Tour and The Challenge Tour are relatively similar. The Challenge Tour was a second-tier series of events revived by World Snooker in 2018 to allow amateurs to play competitive snooker. It still needed few tweaks. But what The Challenge Tour and Q Tour provides are the best players over a long period of time.
There are two professional places available for those participating on The Q Tour. One for a player finishing at the top of the rankings and the other to the winner of its play-off. Should there be more places available to reward amateurs for their consistency? Andrew Pagett, who entered both Q School and the Challenge Tour, believed the latter should play a more vital role:
Ending
Despite its faults, Q School is the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is mainly because it can organise so many players. Of course, it would be impossible to bring out the best players every year, all the time. The percentage might not be because of the lack of quality of Q School, but because of the high-quality on the current tour.
However, Q School doesn’t deserve significantly more places than The Q Tour. I will write about what I think about The Q Tour another time, but its predecessor covered ten events which gave a better indication to who the best and most consistent amateurs really are. I think The Q Tour should’ve offered three or four spots (including a play-off place) instead of two and Q School offers twelve spots instead of last year’s sixteen.
Q School is a staple in the snooker calendar and will continue to do so. Hopefully, this will happen once Q Tour becomes more established. The Q Tour have the potential to be a brilliant amateur tour that deserves more professional spots.
Actually, my biggest concern is the stupid ranking system which is choking the game. But if we do have tour cards, flat draws and a Q School, then the format is completely poor.
OK, I lay my cards on the table, I am a mathematician, and my analysis of the triple-knockout system shows it to be a weak structure, in terms of fairness. There are usually a couple of graduates who had a significantly weaker section, and then there are byes opening up in QS2 and QS3, which unbalances it still further. The top-up ‘order of merit’ is even worse… I wouldn’t be upset if there weren’t better systems available, but there are.
The fairest system would be a Swiss Elimination. Unfortunately not many people, and no-one in snooker, knows what that is. The idea is that players keep on playing (1 match per day) until they lose a certain number of matches (3 or 4 in my scheme). At the moment they have to keep coming and going, which is a logistic nightmare for them, and an additional expense. For each round a player gets drawn against someone with the same number of wins, and gradually players bubble up or bubble down to their appropriate level. You ultimately get a compete ranking 1-200. Every few days, players from lower down get eliminated, narrowing down the field (a bit like the ‘cut’ in golf).
If the number of players is too large to play one match per day, you can split them up for the early rounds, maybe in different locations (e.g. China). Then bring them together when the field narrows (after 5 matches in my scheme). At the end of it all, you get the best players and a fair top-up list, and everyone knows where they stand. It would be very tough, but it would prepare them for even tougher times to come…
Swiss is used in other sports – it’s extremely successful, efficient and FAIR. I’ve ‘done the math’ and run computer simulations.