Should snooker have a mid-Winter break?

A mere eight weeks elapsed between Luca Brecel's triumph at the Crucible and the first awakenings of the new season - the Championship League slowly opening proceedings during the final week of June.

We're still more than nine weeks away from qualifying for this year's World Championship and whether they like it or not no less than 35 tour professionals are now enduring an enforced mid-winter break from ranking events.

Five are currently set to finish in the top 64. Stuart Bingham and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh are safe, Jimmy Robertson almost certainly too. Scott Donaldson is under mild threat, Mark Davis may look over his shoulders but has the insurance of a healthy 17500 advance over 4th place on the 1-year save-your-tour-card-that-way list.

The others are below the line.

For Xing Zihao, Hammad Miah, Alfie Burden, Thor Chuan Leong, Dean Young, Jimmy White, Reanne Evans, Manasawin Phetmalaikul, Mostafa Dorgham, and Baipat Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan tour survival is assured - although most if not all appear in danger of dropping off the tour at end 2024-25.

Andy Lee, Muhammad Asif, Mark King (who has the additional problem of an ongoing indefinite suspension), Andres Petrov, Asjad Iqbal, Ryan Thomerson, Anton Kazakov, Mink Nutcharut Wongharuthai, Himanshu Jain, Victor Sarkis, Rebecca Kenna and Stephen Hendry must qualify for the Crucible to earn a new 2-year-card. Of course Stephen Hendry is likely to be gifted one anyway if he wants it.

Eight have mathematical chances to survive even if they don't reach the Crucible. Mark Joyce is the only one of those whose chances look remotely realistic - a run to the final qualifying round might do the trick. For Andy Hicks, James Cahill, Martin Gould, Rod Lawler, Fergal O'Brien, Ken Doherty and Peng Yisong best to consider that it is Crucible or bust.

So should WST organise a more inclusive calendar of events?

What they should do is get rid of the ranking event edition of the championship league. Also get rid of qualifiers for Home nation events. That's pretty much around 6-7 weeks or so freed up and means they can manoeuvre things around more comfortably.

gninnur karona wrote:A mere eight weeks elapsed between Luca Brecel's triumph at the Crucible and the first awakenings of the new season - the Championship League slowly opening proceedings during the final week of June.

We're still more than nine weeks away from qualifying for this year's World Championship and whether they like it or not no less than 35 tour professionals are now enduring an enforced mid-winter break from ranking events.

Five are currently set to finish in the top 64. Stuart Bingham and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh are safe, Jimmy Robertson almost certainly too. Scott Donaldson is under mild threat, Mark Davis may look over his shoulders but has the insurance of a healthy 17500 advance over 4th place on the 1-year save-your-tour-card-that-way list.

The others are below the line.

For Xing Zihao, Hammad Miah, Alfie Burden, Thor Chuan Leong, Dean Young, Jimmy White, Reanne Evans, Manasawin Phetmalaikul, Mostafa Dorgham, and Baipat Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan tour survival is assured - although most if not all appear in danger of dropping off the tour at end 2024-25.

Andy Lee, Muhammad Asif, Mark King (who has the additional problem of an ongoing indefinite suspension), Andres Petrov, Asjad Iqbal, Ryan Thomerson, Anton Kazakov, Mink Nutcharut Wongharuthai, Himanshu Jain, Victor Sarkis, Rebecca Kenna and Stephen Hendry must qualify for the Crucible to earn a new 2-year-card. Of course Stephen Hendry is likely to be gifted one anyway if he wants it.

Eight have mathematical chances to survive even if they don't reach the Crucible. Mark Joyce is the only one of those whose chances look remotely realistic - a run to the final qualifying round might do the trick. For Andy Hicks, James Cahill, Martin Gould, Rod Lawler, Fergal O'Brien, Ken Doherty and Peng Yisong best to consider that it is Crucible or bust.

So should WST organise a more inclusive calendar of events?

Fergal is retiring anyway.

But yes a good summary.

If the sport is getting into bed with Saudi, they should have got them to fork out for a couple of events in March for the whole tour. It wouldn't make anyone change their view but at least they could point to it as being a move to portray them as serious supporters of the sport as a whole rather than the elite of the elite.

I don't mind the Championship League ranking event starting when it does, although a bit of a non event. It needs to be truncated though and momentum needs to build from it rather than meandering with weeks between tournaments in Aug and most of Sept before then going manic either side of Christmas and then a period heavily weighted towards the elite and fallow for the rest. Ideally there would be extra tournaments (unlikely) but spaced out and ordered better.

Do we know if the intentions for Shanghai and Hong Kong are to remain invitational or is there a hope they will become rankers?