Snooker Season 2021/22

Joe_ Public · 18-08-2021 11:56pm

Had to go out after first frame and assumed Allen would win it but surprised to see Vafaei nicked it 3-2. Good win for Hossein as Mark been playing decent stuff last couple of weeks. Been waiting patiently for a while for Hossein to make the breakthrough, maybe this will be the season!

dobman88 · 19-08-2021 4:47pm

Think Ken and Neal took Gary Wilson's comments out of context there myself. I think he was saying the standard from both players during the match was an embarrassment, not that Hendry is an embarrassment.

Still, he could have chosen his words more carefully tbf.

waynescales1 · 19-08-2021 8:13pm

Not unusual for Wilson. He’s often fairly obnoxious and negative with his comments. Comes across as a bit of a whinger in my opinion.

Joe_ Public · 19-08-2021 8:32pm

Winner of Ken v Joe O'Connor will face Anthony Hamilton in R3. Decent chance for Ken to make some progress in this tourney, has looked in reasonable nick early doors.

waynescales1 · 19-08-2021 9:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777845#Comment_117777845

But unfortunately ITV doing a BBC and showing highlights, analysis and interviews when there’s live snooker on a TV table. Very mysterious.

mrunsure · 19-08-2021 10:09pm

Eurosport are showing Tables 1 and 2 matches on the internet for subscribers in Ireland. That might be of help to some people. Eurosport are showing the British Open on Eurosport 1 in some countries but not in Ireland, even though ITV4 is not officially available in Ireland.

Joe_ Public · 19-08-2021 10:51pm

Quick enough death in the end. Missed a couple of bad ones and O'Connor clinical enough about punishing him. End of Irish interest for this week anyway. Not counting our northern friends, of course!

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 9:56am

Williams has stopped doing his unconventional break off. His last three break offs were normal.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 3:20pm

Slessors had three good chances to win this opening frame already. Common refrain against Judd, how many chances do they imagine they're going to get?

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 4:55pm

What a miss by Slessor on the blue.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 5:16pm

Now's the big chance for him. Just do it Elliott!

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 5:26pm

Well done Elliot, great red to win it. Judd shouldn't be winning matches playing like that, but you still got to produce the shots to beat him.

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 5:31pm

Last 16 draw has a very “random” look to it, only 2 of the top 16 left in the tournament I think. You’d expect that with the Bo5 format probably, still I’ll take it though, good to have the snooker back on telly.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 5:52pm

Judd in his interview not all that inclined to accept the official rankings that now say he isn't No.1. I see his point, but the world championships have always been accorded huge weight in the ranking system so this is only possible because his last two crucible performances have been underwhelming. I don't have an issue with that personally and good to see an edge developing at the top like this.

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 7:41pm

Ali Carter gets a max.

Trump is obviously still the best regardless of what the rankings say, and most pundits seem to think that. The fact that he managed to stay at number 1 without winning the world championship for two years shows how consistent he has been.

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 8:12pm

Is Trump the best though? Over 19+ frames I'd put my money on Selby. There's far more ranking points on offer for the WC, and rightly so, because multi-session matches are the hardest to win.

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 8:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782454#Comment_117782454

Trump's been more consistent than Selby. Selby was significantly poorer than Trump the season before last, even though rankings are supposed to take into account the performance over two seasons. That season Selby only won two tournaments and didn't get to any other finals whereas Trump won six tournaments, and also got to the final of the non-ranking Champion of Champions, where he only just missed out as he was about to win in the penultimate frame and Robertson needed snookers.

It is harder to win a tournament with shorter matches, because that gives more chance for the weaker player, so winning a lot of those kinds of tournaments is very difficult.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 8:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782492#Comment_117782492

So the British Open, or even the Gibraltar Open for that matter, is harder to win than the world championships? Interesting perspective i have to say.

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 8:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782553#Comment_117782553

My thoughts exactly. 17 of the last 24 WCs were won by the same 4 players. You have to be, at the very least, one of the best players of your generation, if not all time, to win the WC, which is reflected by the prize money/ranking points.

eric hoone · 20-08-2021 9:07pm

This tournament's gone right off the boil with all the big names gone. I'll still watch it but not sure best of fives is a good format to keep the quality

Brian? · 20-08-2021 9:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782631#Comment_117782631

I haven’t watched a huge amount, but what I have watched has been poor.

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 9:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782553#Comment_117782553

Looking at it from a purely statistical point of view, that is the case.

Suppose player A beats player B in 70% of frames. So in a one frame shoot out, player A has a 70% chance of winning.

If you have a best of 3, your possible frame outcomes are AA, ABA, BAB and BB, with the following probabilities: 0.49, 0.147, 0.063 and 0.09. That means that player A has a 0.637/(0.637+0.153) chance of winning that match i.e. 80.1%.

In a best of 5 that increases to 87.0%.

And so on.

So the longer the match, the "easier" it is for the better player to win.

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 9:23pm

You’ve disproved your own point with the above explanation. Shorter matches result in more weaker players reaching the latter stages of those tournaments, resulting in a lower overall standard for the tournament, making the tournament easier to win.

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 9:32pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782693#Comment_117782693

But you've got a high chance of going out of the tournament early yourself so you are more likely not make the later stages of the tournament to play those weaker players. Therefore a top player has a lower chance of winning a tournament with shorter matches. If you win several of these tournaments, that shows that you've been significantly and consistently better than the rest of the field in order to overcome the greater odds of being knocked out in an early round.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 9:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782657#Comment_117782657

So if it's technically harder to win those smaller tournaments, why wouldn't Judd be able to manage better at the bigger ones with the longer formats that suit the better players? That doesn't compute for me. The two longest formats are worlds and tour champs and he's only been beyond the QF in one of them over the past 2 seasons. Which, basically, is the main reason why he's not No.1 anymore.

waynescales1 · 20-08-2021 9:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782734#Comment_117782734

It means he’s been better than the rest of the field at winning best of 7 matches against players ranked in the bottom 32, the significance of which according to the ranking points weighting, is negligible and rightly so.

mrunsure · 20-08-2021 10:01pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782762#Comment_117782762

Trump's won plenty of longer frame matches as well over the years but there is relatively little separating the players at the top of the game and it just so happened that he lost quite a few of these recently. Sport is random. I don't think it is a case of him not being able to perform in longer matches or his game being suited to shorter matches. Man City comfortably won the league last year but lost to Chelsea twice in a month including the biggest match of the season. Chelsea have the more prestigious trophy (Champions League) but most pundits would say that Man City were the best English team last season.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 10:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782848#Comment_117782848

Judd is a world champion so can't be said he's not able to do it. But past two seasons he's come up short and that's why he's No.2 for now. Maybe people don't like the ranking system, but that's what it says anyway.

Just to take one tournament last season: Judd won the Northern Ireland Open last season, beat Ronnie well in the final. But faced a grand total of one top 50 ranked player to get there. I'm sure every draw isn't that benign but quite a few are eminently negotiable and my recollection of watching Judd last season is of him playing an awful lot of bad snooker and lads just not having the bottle to beat him. Not knocking him, still great achievement to do what he has done and he is an amazing, once in a generation talent.

But I'm old school in many ways and I just hold the worlds in such high esteem that it fully merits its exalted place in the rankings system. The calendar is so crammed now that I think half the players are turning up week to week, possibly worn out and exhausted, already mentally half beaten. And if they lose, no biggie, there's another tournament next week. And the week after that.

But the worlds is different. There's nothing after the worlds and it can and probably will define your season. It demands everything of your game, a mental endurance test over 2 weeks, that only the very strongest and best survive.

Or to put all this very simply another way: ask the likes of Ding, Kyren Wilson, Mark Allen, Barry Hawkins etc what's the hardest, most demanding tournament to win and i don't believe there's a moment's hesitation in any of their answers.

Joe_ Public · 20-08-2021 10:47pm

The point about players more suited than others to shorter formats is a key one. Anto McGill is a classic example of a player you probably won't hear much about for a lot of the season and then no surprise come Sheffield, he's there or thereabouts. Personally, McGill getting to world sf and qf, and being narrowly beaten in classics, is worth as much to me as 2 or 3 shootouts or riga or even Scottish Opens. But maybe that's just my personal prejudice.

ArmaniJeanss · 21-08-2021 12:15am

I think that the Worlds is too weighted in the rankings - doesn't seem right to me that a win there counts the same as winning five £100K-to-the-winner events.

I've no quibble with the prizemoney if that's the pot that the sponsors/wpbsa are willing to put up, but it overly skews the rankings imo because they insist on a 'point per pound' method.

It doesn't help that the World prize fund is itself so skewed, £500K to the winner but only £200K to the runner up. Most sports have a much flatter structure. Like there's no reasonable case to say that Selby was 2.5 times a better player than Murphy in early May, but that's how it translates when it's applied to the ranking list.

Always instructive to see how other sports do it - e.g., in golf, regardless of prize fund, the majors are worth roughly just double points vis-a-vis a top tier non-major event. Within every event (major or not) second place gets 60% of whatever points the winner gets, 3rd gets 40% and it continues on a sliding scale. This seems a much fairer method to me.

I guess when we hopefully get the Chinese events back (some of which were £200K to the winner) that it will balance out the Sheffield effect somewhat.

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 12:39am

I think the ranking systems can always be questioned. I don't know about necessarily looking to other sports, though. It's not that long ago i recall some brouhaha in golf circles about Justin Rose being No.1 despite other golfers being in better form and winning more. Or tennis when poor Caroline Wozniacki used to ship some grief for being No.1 despite not having, at that point, ever won slam event. You could argue a points system with the worlds a little less weighted might be fairer, but you'll still probably get anomalies regardless as no system seems perfect.

Question in this case, though, is folk seem to believe, as Judd himself does, that his case to be No.1 is both watertight and unarguable. I'm far from convinced personally that that is the case.

ArmaniJeanss · 21-08-2021 12:58am

Yeah, it's tough to get it perfect - golf is continually tweaking, almost every year and there's a new system coming in next season. There's always debates about winning versus ultra-consistent placing, how long events should stay on your ranking for, the merits of the 'turn up every week' player versus the 'selective schedule' player.

I suppose for those who think the snooker point-for-pound system is fair I'd ask what their cut-off point is. If Betfred were convinced to make it £1M for the winner of the Worlds next season, and thus the winner almost automatically also becomes #1, is it still a fair system?

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 1:31am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783272#Comment_117783272

That's a fair question and honest answer is that would obviously be a big issue. The worlds preeminence is already an issue as it is, it just lords over the rest of the season and efforts to change that, like bringing in the tour championship and the rather tenuous 3 majors triple crown concept, hasnt really diluted that in any significant way I don't think. So i believe the ranking system simply reflects that core reality. But i see the other side of it too. Spreading the load out over the season would help things, should never have diminished the uk when they did for starters, but i promised to stop banging on about that 2 years ago!

To be honest, I don't see this as that big a deal anyway. Judds a bit piqued, having a bit of a pop at Selby and it just adds to the spice when the Northern Ireland spins around. Not been enough testy rivalries in the game, so it's all good far as I'm concerned!

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 3:10pm

Interesting they have snooker on this afternoon given they usually dont for the itv covered events, at least the past few years anyway. Proper order really.

mrunsure · 21-08-2021 6:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117785011#Comment_117785011

The lack of snooker on Saturday afternoon is usually because of racing, but that is on the main ITV channel.

But they do have racing tomorrow on ITV4, and therefore snooker only in the evening.

So not really any better than past years. They have just put the racing on Sunday afternoon instead of Saturday afternoon. Arguably worse this time, as it means a one session final.

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 7:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117785823#Comment_117785823

Do you think it's only a one session final because of racing? It's a short format tournament so I'm not sure why you'd suddenly jump from bo5, bo7 to bo17 or 19 for the final.

I suspect itv had to make that choice today because there was no other way to squeeze the whole thing into 7 days, so normal service will resume for champion of champions or whatever's next. Tv coverage is critical, of course, just not a huge fan of tv companies having so much power to dictate formats and schedules.

mrunsure · 21-08-2021 7:25pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117785974#Comment_117785974

Yes, going from best of 7 to 17 or 19 would be a big jump, so having the racing on Sunday instead of Saturday fits. Still, it means a gaping hole at the end of the tournament that doesn't exist in BBC or Eurosport tournaments. According to David Hendon on the Snooker Scene podcast, ITV didn't know about the best of 5 format before they agreed to host the tournament.

waynescales1 · 21-08-2021 7:56pm

Slessor playing well again against Wilson. I’ve seen him play very well before but never consistently. A tournament win would do him a lot of good.

Will it be best of 9 or 11 on Sunday evening I wonder...

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 7:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786018#Comment_117786018

What we can deduce from today is that ITV can switch the racing to accommodate the snooker if it wants. But it's probably they just don't want to, only a 128 player tournament forced their hand this occasion. Whether the final was played in the afternoon or evening tomorrow I'm not sure makes all that difference tbh. Suits me perfectly as i can focus on golf and hurling for the afternoon. I don't know what contracts they sign for these things, but find it curious a major sporting body seems happy to leave Saturday afternoons empty at the whim of the broadcaster who just isn't suited by it!

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 7:58pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786126#Comment_117786126

Survived a pretty hairy one against Zhou earlier, maybe drawing some heart from that. BO11 tomorrow.

mrunsure · 21-08-2021 8:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786130#Comment_117786130

ITV4 managed to show the Tour Championship on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons for the last two years. Ironically, it would arguably have been better if they kept racing on Saturday afternoon like they did for the inaugural Tour Championship in 2019, because in 2019 the final was spread across three sessions, on Saturday night and two sessions on Sunday and was the only tournament apart from the world championship that had a longer final than best of 19. It did mean they had to use two tables for the first round in 2019, whereas they had one table and one match per day in 2020 and 2021.

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 9:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786241#Comment_117786241

Again, I'm assuming it's because they have no other way around it. If they didn't have an afternoon Saturday session, then they have an issue trying to fit that sf in, unless they want them to play into Saturday night to finish it. Probably suited them better to have the 3 session final.

eric hoone · 21-08-2021 9:15pm

Hope Wilson goes on and wins the event now, he's paid his dues

waynescales1 · 21-08-2021 9:22pm

Thought that was a decent quality match, included back to back centuries. A Bo11 final starting at 7pm will be good, could go til midnight if it’s a 6-5.

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 9:26pm

Yeah, was a decent match. Was hoping Elliot would sneak it, though he did irk me a little going for those 5 snookers that time!

waynescales1 · 21-08-2021 10:57pm

Some clearance from Williams. Loved that black along the top cushion, made it took so much easier than it was.

Joe_ Public · 21-08-2021 10:58pm

Williams turned it up a notch there. Great green and that black was sweet as a nut. Curtains for Jimbo you'd think.

ArmaniJeanss · 22-08-2021 12:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786130#Comment_117786130

Thats always been the way that Hearn/Matchroom and their sister organisations work. They go to the TV companies, ask what they want and when they want it, and then pitch a suggested event around that. They willingly co-operate in ways that other sports don't.

So if ITV want a 7 day competition but with Saturday afternoon blank when Royal Ascot/GrandNational/Guineas/Derby/StLeger is on, then that's exactly what will be provided.

Exact same thing happens in the darts as well on ITV4, lots of annoying blank Saturday afternoons.

ArmaniJeanss · 22-08-2021 12:08pm

Like most of ye I'm not sold on these short format events, but on the other hand I do like the idea of a game starting at 9.30pm which we had most nights this week.

For events like the Masters, you can sometimes come from work and switch on the snooker at 8.30pm to see it's a 5-0 game about to finish 6-0. No more snooker. Whereas events like this weeks pretty much guarantee snooker until 10.30/11pm, but not necessarily star names because of the high attrition rate in the format. Swings and roundabouts I guess.

Joe_ Public · 22-08-2021 12:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117787930#Comment_117787930

I can appreciate the commercial realities that are at play here, snooker - and maybe darts as well - isn't at the level of prestige that you can go in and start laying down absolute conditions to broadcasting companies. There likely is going to be give and take.

There's still a question of how far you're willing to go to facilitate tv. After all, it was at least partly due to pressure from the bbc that the UK championships format was reduced which I believe has been very bad for the sport. Having a few blank Saturday afternoons pales in comparison to that momentous decision tbf.

Snooker Season 2021/22

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