2022 Q School 2 !!

Not the most exciting bunch but thats how it goes. A lot of good players will have squeaky bums in Q3

Hill with a century.

LBM 1-0 up too.

ZAK SURETY is BACK on tour and LBM has to try again

The_Abbott wrote:ZAK SURETY is BACK on tour and LBM has to try again

The Belgians aren't coming

The usual bunch of 'weren't quite good enough previously' ex-pros.

9 of the 12 who qualified 2 years ago dropped off again this year.

Aaron Hill keeps his place!

Sanderson Lam is BACK!

Sanderson Lam looks a nice guy, he's always good at Q-School, but every time I watch him on TV he's struggling badly against the big boys. I hope this time will be better.

Zak Surety then... Well, I hardly noticed him as a Tour player the last two seasons. Aaron Hill had a promising start, but he disappeared during 2021/2022. Maybe he took his lesson and will return stronger.

Vallomas wrote:Sanderson Lam looks a nice guy, he's always good at Q-School, but every time I watch him on TV he's struggling badly against the big boys. I hope this time will be better.

Zak Surety then... Well, I hardly noticed him as a Tour player the last two seasons. Aaron Hill had a promising start, but he disappeared during 2021/2022. Maybe he took his lesson and will return stronger.

Some real quality won't be on tour. Not enough places and some in the same part of the draw for Sunny, Holty, Higginsony and Mafliny to get back on tour

I reffed the Hill v Zhao match.

Aaron played well.

Dave Hendon suggesting one q school event should be for under 25's only

SteveJJ wrote:Dave Hendon suggesting one q school event should be for under 25's only

Well I would have one for Over 30's and 2 for under 30's. Its not fair to completely discriminate against age. You can still be a decent professional in your 30's and 40's and even 50's.

Wells was a pink away from the tour. Duffy pots pink and black. 3-3. Decider!

Wells only has himself to blame but has a bye into round 3 so can't complain too much about that. A few days to sort his head out and could play TK in that match so guaranteed 4th round

Adam Duffy is BACK! - the man that comes from the home of Snooker. I think he lives in a dumpster outside the crucible.

I just hope his dad Patrick doesn't wake up and find out this was all a dream.

Almost corrected you there until realised Dallas link,seen Adam play a few times in Sheffield league, seems nice lad apart from following Wednesday.

RunningSide wrote:Almost corrected you there until realised Dallas link,seen Adam play a few times in Sheffield league, seems nice lad apart from following Wednesday.

yeah I remember they did a video about him once when he won 4 qualifiers to get to judgement day (but failed to qualify for crucible) but really wanted to get there. Seemed a decent bloke.

Zhao Jianbo ends QSchool2 with a five frame order of merit lead.

Zhao Jianbo 38
Akani Songsermsawad 33
Ross Bulman 33
Daniel Wells 33
Michael Georgiou 32
Steven Hallworth 32
Lukas Kleckers 31

Sam Baird, Kishan Hirani and Riley Parsons notable absentees that no one has mentioned yet (I think)

chengdufan wrote:Sam Baird, Kishan Hirani and Riley Parsons notable absentees that no one has mentioned yet (I think)

And several others. Simon Lichtenberg, the German number 1, seems to have 'retired', aged 24. That's a sad reflection of the system.

Adam Duffy England Age 33 6th and 7th season on tour Turned Pro 2011/2012
Sanderson Lam England Age 28 5th and 6th season on tourTurned Pro 2015/2016
Zak Surety England Age 30 5th and 6th season on tour Turned Pro 2014/2015
Aaron Hill Eire Age 20 3rd and 4th season on tour Turned Pro 2020/2021

lhpirnie wrote:

chengdufan wrote:Sam Baird, Kishan Hirani and Riley Parsons notable absentees that no one has mentioned yet (I think)

And several others. Simon Lichtenberg, the German number 1, seems to have 'retired', aged 24. That's a sad reflection of the system.

sometime players gets a Eureka moment when they realize as good as they are they will never get to the standard required

The_Abbott wrote:

SteveJJ wrote:Dave Hendon suggesting one q school event should be for under 25's only

Well I would have one for Over 30's and 2 for under 30's. Its not fair to completely discriminate against age. You can still be a decent professional in your 30's and 40's and even 50's.

Or one for under 25's
One for 25-40
One for 40+

SteveJJ wrote:

The_Abbott wrote:

SteveJJ wrote:Dave Hendon suggesting one q school event should be for under 25's only

Well I would have one for Over 30's and 2 for under 30's. Its not fair to completely discriminate against age. You can still be a decent professional in your 30's and 40's and even 50's.

Or one for under 25's
One for 25-40
One for 40+

its ok as it is

You want Young players to come through on ability, not because they are young

we will at least be saying goodbye to either Holt, Sunny or MOD. All in same quarter of draw. Zak Surety was to play in that group too. I bet he's pleased to avoid that.

Wildey wrote:

SteveJJ wrote:

The_Abbott wrote:

SteveJJ wrote:Dave Hendon suggesting one q school event should be for under 25's only

Well I would have one for Over 30's and 2 for under 30's. Its not fair to completely discriminate against age. You can still be a decent professional in your 30's and 40's and even 50's.

Or one for under 25's
One for 25-40
One for 40+

its ok as it is

You want Young players to come through on ability, not because they are young

You want young players to come through on potential. Obviously they aren't good enough yet. It's about developing players for the future.

But having age-stratified Q Schools is silly. We already have a U18 tournament (although it should be U21). The real problem with Q School is it tends to favour battling players, who win frames on the colours. But those players won't do so well on the tour. The structure of Q School is wrong.

I wonder if there is something to be said about awarding wildcard tour places to players who show great promise, but don't get through.

lhpirnie wrote:The real problem with Q School is it tends to favour battling players, who win frames on the colours. But those players won't do so well on the tour. The structure of Q School is wrong.

I admire your deep-seated conviction that it's always the system's fault when players don't play well enough to win matches, it never ceases to amaze me the angles you manage to find and present.

But really, just being good at snooker on a consistent basis is the real factor regardless of what system you impose or promote.

I agree, it'll always be better if more good quality tables are available, but that's not as much structural as it is economic, and a trail of into other topics.

Steve Davis emerged as a player because he beat everyone at his club, and had a reputation at his club for beating everyone at his club. He then got challenge matches from people from other clubs, which he tended to also win. When he arrived on the scene proper he'd already had countless victories and was ready for the big time and everyone knew he was a genuine threat by the age of 21 purely by natural word of mouth.

Likewise Jimmy White. He carved through the amateur scene like a hot knife through butter so that by the time he was a late teenager he was already being touted as a future world champion and an immediate and present threat to the current pros.

And that's how it usually goes. Hendry, O'Sullivan, Selby, Murphy, Allen, Trump, Wilson, they just burst onto the scene regardless of what system produced them. Because they had the necessary talent to do so.

If snooker goes a few years without finding a new talent, that doesn't mean the system for finding them is at fault, it's usually blatantly obvious because they cream through the opposition. It just means there's no new hot player at the moment. Or, rather, that the newest hot players aren't quite as hot as the current leading pack. Nothing really new there.

I get that it would be 'nice' if all the players who could play to a top 48 standard could all get a top 48 rhythm to their life, but that's where the current limit is, for a whole host of reasons. The sport doesn't really need an endless supply of random top 48 players, and neither does the viewing public.

People play to win money and/or fame/reputation, the aim is to find out if you can win a tournament. Making your entire personal pet peeve "what a bad lot snooker provides to the top 49+'ers" isn't really relevant to either the players nor the spectators nor the promoters.

If a player doesn't feel like they'll ever win anything and gets no enjoyment from trying for a top 48 spot then there's not a lot of point twiddling the system all the time to try and molly coddle players on the brink of quitting. It's an entertainment sport, everyone is in it just to see and play good quality snooker and make some money and a reputation. Wondering why random player X is struggling while random player Y seems to be quite happy isn't really anyone's issue other than the players themselves.

I mean here, we've got 3 tournaments each producing 4 new pros, so 12 new pros every year. I feel sure any young talent that matures into greatness will, by the sheer weight of odds in their favour, win one of these places in the first 6 years of their 'serious' career and go on to great things. If they are obviously talented enough. It's not really about showing promise, it's about beating other players regularly and easily, regardless of whether one of the frames was a masterpiece of execution.

Some good points there from LDS

And, for the meantime, I’m pleased to see Sanderson Lam back on tour before he drops off in 2024. He is, if nothing else, an entertaining player to watache.

LDS wrote:

lhpirnie wrote:The real problem with Q School is it tends to favour battling players, who win frames on the colours. But those players won't do so well on the tour. The structure of Q School is wrong.

I admire your deep-seated conviction that it's always the system's fault when players don't play well enough to win matches, it never ceases to amaze me the angles you manage to find and present.

But really, just being good at snooker on a consistent basis is the real factor regardless of what system you impose or promote.

...

Thanks for your admiration! I guess I should be grateful for that!

The reason why I often talk about systems is because it is my area of expertise. It's actually possible to measure things like 'fairness', and model development of players.

Of course if a player like Ronnie O'Sullivan comes along then he would likely succeed under any system. But there are other players, whilst you might not care to watch them, are important to the game, and deserve their right to make a living as players. The main qualification system (Q School) should produce the players who are best equipped to do well on the pro tour, either immediately or later (after improvement with the experience they gained).

My argument is that it doesn't do that, is unfair, and costs more than it needs to. That's not an opinion, it's a calculation.

I'm happy to debate that, but be prepared for some hard-core maths and stats!

it really shouldn't take much to notice that the current q school format is nonsensical.

At this stage it's a lot more than a few years since Snooker consistently had new talent coming through. Although Q-School is just an indulging of Hearn's Golf fetish I think the problems run deeper. Any player should be at least reasonably well developed before they start competing against the Top 64/80 ranked players. There seems to be too big a leap onto the tour.