Witz78 wrote:wildJONESEYE wrote:Witz78 wrote:Tickets bought up, looking forward to this far more than i was the Grand Prix last year.
It will be like chalk and cheese the difference between these 2 i reckon. All hail Hearn !!
im looking forward to it and think it will be a great event but Ranking na it opens up the ranking system more farcical where someone fluking a 3-0 win over Ronnie and then we end up with Dave Harold winning because hes poo at best of 9s lately.
the way i see it the length of a match shouldnt make a massive difference to who wins. The best player should still be good enough to win 3/5 frames (60%)
If the so called weaker player goes 1-0 up they will probably get into the same mindset they would at 3-2 up in a best of 9 and start to bottle it
I think short matches aren't necessarily the lottery that people suggest. I've heard people say BO9s are a completely lottery. They aren't. If it was a complete lottery, a person who had never picked up a cue in his life could beat Ronnie O'Sullivan. That's not the case. In a best of 9, you still need to be good enough to win five frames. Even if they are not the test that, say, a best of 19 is, you still need to be able to make a strong start and be able to keep your opponent at bay.
On saying that, the shorter the format of a game, the less test of a players all round game it is. If a player can make big match-winning breaks, they may get the run of the balls and be 2 or 3 frames up in no time. And the bigger a possibility that a player can lose a game without being given much of a chance. We've all seen people lose best of nines, without doing anything wrong really. Which is why I think is the shortest format you should have. I don't hate best of nines like some people seem to, but they should definately only be used for opening round matches. The semis should be longer, and there's no way in hell a final should be best of nine. You should at least have the semis say, best of 11, and the final best of 19.
Best of five doesn't test someones match play, it's tests the ability to make a strong start, end of. As has been said, this shorter format is is designed to create upsets. I have nothing against this tournament to be honest, I just think it shouldn't be a ranking tournament. It's a crying shame that the BBC didn't want to keep the Grand Prix on. Because this tournament Hearn has introduced would've looked good as a non-ranker that was an additional tournament in the snooker calendar alongside the already established tournaments, including the Grand Prix. Which was a tournament I remember being psyched for last year, esepcially as it was on the week of my birthday. I turned 29 at my mate's house, watching snooker with a beer in my hand.
It just seems odd to me that, that I was never too much of a critic of best of nines in the early stages, but saw plenty of people going on and on about how much they hated them, that I suddenly now see a lot of people hailing this as fair game in a ranking event.