We will have the third Championship League winner in this calendar year. Yet this is incredibly tame considering what 2020 has thrown at us.
The new season starts in Milton Keynes rather than the beautiful city of Riga. In fact, all of the first eight fixtures on the 2020/21 calendar will be held in Milton Keynes. It is rather odd to witness three Championship League events when each event is slightly different from each other. Scott Donaldson won the first which featured seven groups and a winner’s group. After lockdown, Luca Brecel beat a 64-man field in June to win the second Championship League. Stringent regulations were implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic and it was a resounding success with not one positive test result.
Weirdly, the third Championship League is a fully-fledged ranking event. It shouldn’t be a ranking event. The frames played are too few and the event doesn’t take place in a single leg. When the Championship League was a non-ranking event, Luca Brecel drew six matches and won three to win the title! That event was a success but I didn’t think it was such much of a success to deserve ranking status. The only reason why it would be a ranking event is because the future of the Chinese events are unknown due to national restrictions.
But the Championship League does give lower-ranked players experience of playing more than one match in an event. It is much better than losing in the first round and going home early. But is a tournament with BO4 matches justifiable? Maybe the bar of a ranking event was set lower since the Snooker Shoot-Out turned into a ranking event in 2017.
The Championship League Format
The Championship League format is long and detailed. You can find the full details on the Championship League Snooker website. Below is an extract from the same website:
- STAGE ONE will be played across two blocks of eight days: September 13-20 and September 28–October 5. This stage features 32 groups of four players, with two tables per day hosting one group each. The player who tops each group will progress to Stage Two.
- STAGE TWO (October 26-29) sees the 32 group winners split into eight further groups of four, with two groups per day also played over two tables.
- STAGE THREE (October 30) will see the eight Stage Two Group Winners battle it out over two final groups, with the two group winners contesting the best-of-5 final.
Each group of four is a round robin, with matches played as best-of-four frames. Players are awarded three points for a win and one point for a draw. Players who conclude the group on an equal number of points will be separated, in this order, by net frame difference, head-to-head result and, if the players are still tied, by the highest break achieved in the group.
Groups
Group 1
Judd Trump, Alan McManus, David Lilley, Fan Zhengyi
Group 2
Matthew Stevens, Ryan Day, Rod Lawler, Paul Davison (a)
Group 3
Gary Wilson, Robert Milkins, Chen Zifan, Jamie Jones
Group 4
Barry Hawkins, Sam Craigie, Jackson Page, Ben Hancorn
Group 5
Stephen Maguire, Louis Heathcote, Dominic Dale, Leo Fernandez (a)
Group 6
Zhou Yuelong, Ricky Walden, Gerard Greene, Zhao Jianbo
Group 7
Matthew Selt, Ben Woollaston, Si Jiahui, Gao Yang
Group 8
Shaun Murphy, Martin O’Donnell, Jimmy White, Peter Devlin
Group 9
Mark Allen, Luo Honghao, Billy Castle, Jamie Wilson
Group 10
Zhao Xintong, Liam Highfield, Nigel Bond, Oliver Brown (a)
Group 11
Anthony McGill, Alexander Ursenbacher, Riley Parsons, Lukas Kleckers
Group 12
Stuart Bingham, Yuan Sijun, James Cahill, Pang Junxu
Group 13
Jack Lisowski, Ian Burns, Fraser Patrick, Rory McLeod
Group 14
Graeme Dott, Liang Wenbo, Soheil Vahedi, Zak Surety
Group 15
Michael Holt, Anthony Hamilton, Jamie O’Neill, Sean Maddocks
Group 16
Mark Selby, Lyu Haotian, Brandon Sargeant, Fergal O’Brien
Group 17
Neil Robertson, Andrew Higginson, Eden Sharav, Ken Doherty
Group 18
Xiao Guodong, Hossein Vafaei, Jak Jones, Farakh Ajaib
Group 19
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Sunny Akani, Peter Lines, Lee Walker
Group 20
Yan Bingtao, Stuart Carrington, Jordan Brown, Michael White (a)
Group 21
David Gilbert, Lu Ning, Xu Si, Aaron Hill
Group 22
Scott Donaldson, Chris Wakelin, Barry Pinches, Ashley Carty
Group 23
Jimmy Robertson, Mark King, David Grace, Allan Taylor
Group 24
Kyren Wilson, Daniel Wells, Duane Jones, Kuldesh Johal (a)
Group 25
John Higgins, Joe O’Connor, Amine Amiri, Brian Ochoiski (a)
Group 26
Kurt Maflin, Martin Gould, Igor Figueiredo, Simon Lichtenberg
Group 27
Tom Ford, Luca Brecel, Mitchell Mann, Ashley Hugill
Group 28
Mark Williams, Mark Joyce, Lei Peifan, Jamie Clarke
Group 29
Joe Perry, Elliot Slessor, Kacper Filipiak, Steven Hallworth
Group 30
Ali Carter, Mark Davis, Chang Bingyu, Jamie Curtis-Barrett (a)
Group 31
Noppon Saengkham, Tian Pengfei, Robbie Williams, Oliver Lines
Group 32
Ronnie O’Sullivan, Li Hang, Alex Borg, Iulian Boiko
The 2020 Matchroom Multi Sport Championship League Snooker will take place in Ballroom, Stadium MK in Milton Keynes. The first leg will take place between Sunday 13th – 20th September.
Please not that I do not own the images used in this article.
As you know, I’m keen for all snooker events to be ranked, including amateur competitions, but not ‘variant’ snooker like the SO. But you are right in that with 2021 events uncertain, they need to balance the seasons as much as possible for the 2-year system to work properly.
I’m not sure about the 3-points-for-a-win and I definitely don’t like the high-break rule, which could mean a whole day’s play becomes a massive anticlimax if someone can no longer make the break they need, even ignoring the possibility of a player losing a frame deliberately with 3 consecutive misses. I’d prefer them just to play their 12 frames, and if players are tied on frames-won, then play a respotted blue.
I’d also prefer the semi-final round to produce 4 players (1st and 2nd in the 2 groups), so that the final round uses the same format as the rest of the competition, for consistency. There is a way you can order the matches to build towards a climax. Hopefully, they can start earlier than 3pm this time so the day’s play finishes earlier than midnight.
But it has to be said 121 is a remarkable turn-out, and apart from Ding the missing players are either abroad or are unwell. We just have to wait for clarification about broadcasters.