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Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Wildey

JIMO96 wrote:
Wild wrote:to start with it was not Barry Hearn it was the WPBSA under Jason Ferguson and it was braught up following last season shootout where they messed with the rules just to see what players thought.


......OK......if that's whats "to start with", I eagerly await your well informed, intellectual, beautifully constructed, incisive, debate provoking, articulate full retort. I hope I didn't make any spelling mistakes that you're about to point out(!)

dont care about spelling or grammer mistakes on a sports forum its not important <ok>

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Witz78

Jim

why knock the bookies?

the bulk of them who sponsor snooker are massive companies.

Snooker aint in a position to be snobby about who it gets to sponsor it.

Its not that long ago, wed hardly any tournaments with sponsors, Hearn has filled all the sponsorship gaps.

heres an exerpt from this article from ONLY 2 and half years ago

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... ters-wpbsa

A new snooker season starts tomorrow with the sport in its worst commercial position since becoming mainstream TV entertainment more than 30 years ago. The BBC's seminal decision to cover the 1978 World Championship inspired a tournament circuit from which players were able to earn fortunes but this campaign, which begins with the Shanghai Masters, will feature a lack of sponsors, fewer ranking events and lower prize money.

Only six ranking events (plus the Masters) will take place compared with last season's eight, while prize money has fallen by £435,500 to £3,063,600. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association have secured a title sponsor for only one of the four events televised under its contract with the BBC.

Betfred is in the second year of its £2.6m, four-year deal for the World Championship but there is no sponsor for next month's Grand Prix, December's UK Championship or January's Masters, at Wembley. The Welsh Open, which is covered by BBC Wales, the Shanghai Masters and the China Open complete the ranking circuit. Funding issues have led to the disappearance of the Northern Ireland Trophy and the Bahrain Open.

Players are growing increasingly restive over the large gaps between substantial tournaments and the low level of prize money. Only 43 of the 96 players on the professional circuit earned more than £27,000 from it last season.

Last April, the WPBSA chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, outlined a series of planned minor ranking events with scaled-down prize money and ranking point tariffs. Instead, the WPBSA have merely announced six non-ranking events in low-key venues in Britain with aggregate prize money of £90,000. Only 40 of the WPBSA's 96 players entered the first tournament. The world No8, Mark Selby, recently blogged: "I remember Sir Rodney Walker talking to me a while back. He had all these ideas and plans for the future and was really positive but none of them have come to fruition."

Selby is among those who have played exhibitions to packed houses on the continent. "The last couple I've done have been in Germany and the amount of people who came to watch was fantastic. Imagine what it would be like if we had even a minor ranking tournament there. And not just in Germany. Countries like Poland and the Czech Republic are snooker mad. It would certainly make more sense to tap into Europe than have another tournament somewhere like Bahrain."

Last November's Bahrain Open cost the WPBSA £250,000 in prize money and about the same in staging and other costs. The largest attendance was 150. One session started with no spectators at all.

In a recent BBC Radio 5 Live broadcast, The State of Snooker, Steve Davis raised the inherent conflict of interest between the WPBSA as governing body and their wholly owned commercial subsidiary, World Snooker, "promoting events and not allowing outside promoters to breathe".

In theory, the WPBSA also remain the players' trade union, their original purpose, but this function may soon be taken over by the Snooker Players' Association chiefly through the efforts of John Higgins, the world champion, and his manager, Pat Mooney.

"Just over 100 registrations have been received, including 35 of the top 64," says Mooney, who emphasises that evolution is preferred to revolution and that a meeting with WPBSA is desired.

The SPA's first objective would be the co-ordination of a schedule incorporating independently promoted events with ranking points awarded on a scale appropriate to prize funds and other conditions – a recognisable variant of the scheme outlined by Walker last April.

Various independents are breaking new ground for tournaments. For instance, the World Series co-promoted by Mooney and Higgins staged events last season in Jersey, Poland, Russia and Portugal, and before Christmas will stage them in Prague, Warsaw and Jeddah. Yet the WPBSA do not carry information about any tournaments other than their own on worldsnooker.com. Unless the elite game flourishes in the form of more tournaments and more stories worth reporting, snooker's profile could swirl into a vortex of decline.

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby JIMO96

Wild wrote:
JIMO96 wrote:
Wild wrote:to start with it was not Barry Hearn it was the WPBSA under Jason Ferguson and it was braught up following last season shootout where they messed with the rules just to see what players thought.


......OK......if that's whats "to start with", I eagerly await your well informed, intellectual, beautifully constructed, incisive, debate provoking, articulate full retort. I hope I didn't make any spelling mistakes that you're about to point out(!)

dont care about spelling or grammer mistakes on a sports forum its not important <ok>


Well that is indeed a relief to me, Wild. You can now proceed directly to your barrage of hilarious insults.....

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Witz78

JIMO96 wrote:Lol ignore me Witz. It's a personal thing.....I used to work in the bookies and they're runts


i wouldnt be able to work in a bookies without ending up coming up with some scam or fraud :irk:

then again im prob in the perfect job at the moment to commit scams and lines my pockets, but ive never done it.

unlike some, im a man of integrity. <ok>
Last edited by Witz78 on 28 Feb 2012, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Wildey

JIMO96 wrote:
Wild wrote:
JIMO96 wrote:
Wild wrote:to start with it was not Barry Hearn it was the WPBSA under Jason Ferguson and it was braught up following last season shootout where they messed with the rules just to see what players thought.


......OK......if that's whats "to start with", I eagerly await your well informed, intellectual, beautifully constructed, incisive, debate provoking, articulate full retort. I hope I didn't make any spelling mistakes that you're about to point out(!)

dont care about spelling or grammer mistakes on a sports forum its not important <ok>


Well that is indeed a relief to me, Wild. You can now proceed directly to your barrage of hilarious insults.....

na dont feel like it now <ok>

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Wildey

Witz78 wrote:
JIMO96 wrote:Lol ignore me Witz. It's a personal thing.....I used to work in the bookies and they're runts


i wouldnt be able to work in a bookies without ending up coming up with some scam or fraud :irk:

then again im prob in the perfect job at the moment to commit scams and lines my pockets, but ive never done it.

unlike some, im a man of integrity. <ok>

what is your job

lollipop taster at a sweet factory ? <laugh>

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Witz78

Wild wrote:
Witz78 wrote:
JIMO96 wrote:Lol ignore me Witz. It's a personal thing.....I used to work in the bookies and they're runts


i wouldnt be able to work in a bookies without ending up coming up with some scam or fraud :irk:

then again im prob in the perfect job at the moment to commit scams and lines my pockets, but ive never done it.

unlike some, im a man of integrity. <ok>

what is your job

lollipop taster at a sweet factory ? <laugh>


<ok>

Image

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Sickpotter

Jim,

I re-read your page 2 statement and I still disagree with forcing players to make a rail on a safety.

Yes, it would speed up the game but to take away what might be the only safe shot in a given scenario isn't right.

Suppose a player plays a poor safety but happens to leave the cueball in such a place that if the opponent has to hit a rail it's going to spread the pack wide open. In that scenario your rule would reward a poor shot.

As much as we want to look for ways to speed up the game, we need to avoid rules that have a potential for rewarding poor shots.

I'm not fond of the miss rule, if it could be improved I'm all for it. That said, to my recollection the rule has never been liked and they've tried to tinker with it a couple of times without much success. It's pretty much the only rule they can use to avoid the intentional miss though so it has to exist in some form or another.

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Wildey

Sickpotter wrote:It's pretty much the only rule they can use to avoid the intentional miss though so it has to exist in some form or another.


i agree

however there should be more referee discretion regarding the miss rule.

i happen to think refs are too scared to make judgement calls and that is one aspect of a snooker refs job that has been redundent. to the extent when Eirian Williams had to make a decition in the Shanghai masters Final Regarding Red/pink it confused the players they just not used to it in snooker.

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby JIMO96

Sickpotter wrote:Jim,

I re-read your page 2 statement and I still disagree with forcing players to make a rail on a safety.

Yes, it would speed up the game but to take away what might be the only safe shot in a given scenario isn't right.

Suppose a player plays a poor safety but happens to leave the cueball in such a place that if the opponent has to hit a rail it's going to spread the pack wide open. In that scenario your rule would reward a poor shot.

As much as we want to look for ways to speed up the game, we need to avoid rules that have a potential for rewarding poor shots.

I'm not fond of the miss rule, if it could be improved I'm all for it. That said, to my recollection the rule has never been liked and they've tried to tinker with it a couple of times without much success. It's pretty much the only rule they can use to avoid the intentional miss though so it has to exist in some form or another.


I appreciate the reply SP, but we'll just have to agree to disagree I suppose. The scenario you describe is one of infinite possible random occurrences in a frame. Players have to rely on good fortune sometimes as it is, and there's plenty of scenarios in todays game where poor shots are rewarded.

Re: Rule changing to increase entertainment

Postby Sickpotter

Fair enough, I'll leave you with this then.....

A player being rewarded for a bad shot because of luck is different from rewarding a bad shot due to a rule change.

One you have no control over, one you do.