Snooker Century | Subscribe to...

The WPBSA has changed the ranking points tariff for next season.

The two Chinese events are now worth 7,000 points apiece to the winners, as opposed to 5,000 last season.

The World Championship is once again worth 10,000 points and the UK Championship 8,000.

Winning the Grand Prix will net 7,000 points - up 750 on last season.

The Welsh Open is now well and truly the poor relation on the circuit, worth 5,000 to the eventual champion.

As two ranking tournaments have been axed, it seems sensible to up the tariffs bearing in mind the rankings are worked out over two seasons.
Snooker Link

The first ranking event held outside the UK was the 1988 Canadian Masters.

(Actually, the 1975 World Championship in Australia was given ranking status in retrospect, but let’s not enter that world of hurt).

Snooker had long been popular in Canada and of course produced such fine players as Cliff Thorburn, Kirk Stevens and Bill Werbeniuk.

Jimmy White beat Steve Davis to win the title but such are the costs involved in staging ranking tournaments that it was never held again.

Later the same season, the European Open was inaugurated and staged in Deauville, a town in France best known for its casino.

It certainly wasn’t known for snooker. Crowds were sparse and confusion reigned as to what precisely was going on, as evidenced when one player, Eugene Hughes, was mistaken for a waiter during an interval.

Hotel prices were so steep that one player ordered a beer and a sandwich and was charged the equivalent of £42.

One day, the MC did his introductions in French to the few spectators who had rolled in only to be asked to repeat them in English as they had come over from Portsmouth.

It was a disaster. And so, inevitably, the tournament returned to France the next year.

This time it was held in Lyon, which again failed to embrace snooker. This was in the days before blanket coverage on Eurosport.

In 1989, the Australian Open was announced. There was, however, one snag: it would be played in Hong Kong.

Certain assurances were made by the local promoter in Melbourne. However, the address he gave for his ‘business’ turned out to be a local bus shelter.

Mike Hallett would win what was, surprisingly, his only ranking title in Hong Kong before the first really significant step for the WPBSA outside British shores was made: the Asian Open in Bangkok.

Thailand had a young player called James Wattana who everyone recognised as being a great prospect.

But he exceeded all expectations by going all the way to the final before losing 9-6 to Stephen Hendry. His run sparked a snooker boom in his native land that lasted for the next decade.

Thailand became a regular stopping off point for the circuit and for a couple of years staged two ranking events in the same season.

Booms don’t last forever (China beware) and as Wattana’s form dipped, so did the interest. But when he won his home title in 1994 and 1995, the excitement and enthusiasm was a match for anything snooker has ever seen.

Dubai, like Thailand, had been a territory where Barry Hearn’s Matchroom organisation had staged invitation events in the 1980s, building up the interest.

The WPBSA took over the tournament in 1989 and Hearn was so angry that he instructed his players not to compete.

From these difficult beginnings, the event became established as one of the most popular destinations for snooker, played in luxurious, sun drenched surroundings.

There were ranking events too in the 1990s in Belgium, Holland and Germany. Malta staged eight in total between 1996 and 2007, thanks to the commitment of local promoters Richard Balani and Joe Zammit.

China is not, as some seem to believe, a recent convert to the game. It staged its first ranking event in 1990.

From 1999 to 2002 it hosted four more before financial problems led to the China Open disappearing from the calendar.

The then commercial team of the WPBSA took a chance in 2005 by putting it back on in Beijing. It proved to be an inspired decision. Ding Junhui won the title and the new boom sparked.

There are now two fully funded ranking tournaments in China, with possibilities of more to come.

Of course, travelling so far from home has, at times, caused problems for the players, never more so than for Graeme Dott in 2002 when he missed a series of connecting flights, slept through his alarm call, was taken the wrong way in a taxi to the venue, got there late, was docked two frames and lost.

Mark Selby also famously tried to get to the venue in the middle of the night, disorientated to the extent that he thought it was the afternoon, despite it being pitch black outside.

China is the biggest country in the world and the progress made there represents a step forward for snooker.

But Europe, too, is a huge market and Eurosport has brought the game to legions of new fans.

More than ever, the future of snooker belongs outside the UK.

The sport’s had a chequered history when it’s travelled away from British shores but there are many lands still to conquer.

Let’s hope they are conquered in the years to come.
Snooker Link

This week, one of the icons of boom time snooker...

Kirk Stevens was snooker’s man in the white suit: a stylish, entertaining Canadian who will forever be associated with the 147 he made at the 1984 Masters and then a sad, drug addicted, fall from grace.

Good looking and sporting a white suit, he resembled John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever during the game’s rock ‘n’ roll years of the 1980s.

He reached as high as fourth in the world rankings and was a Crucible semi-finalist in 1980 and 1984.

Indeed, he came close both times to reaching the final, losing 16-13 to Alex Higgins and then 16-14 to Jimmy White.

Stevens was among a varied cast of characters who flourished in snooker’s boom period and made up a kind of holy trinity of Canadian players alongside Cliff Thorburn and Bill Werbeniuk who together won the World Team Cup in 1982.

Stevens’s 147 at Wembley in 1984 rates as one of the most exciting maximum breaks ever seen, given the time – there had only previously been two on TV – and the atmosphere, his opponent being London’s favourite, White.

The actor Donald Sutherland was in town and this was the first frame of live snooker he had ever seen.

He must have wondered if the crowd got up and cheered to the rafters after every frame.

It was an iconic moment of the 1980s boom, but life would take a darker turn for the popular Stevens.

In 1985, he played South African Silvino Francisco in the British Open final. During a break in play, Francisco accused Stevens in the toilet of being ‘high as a kite’ on drugs.

He made off the record allegations to a journalist which were tape recorded and then reported.

Eventually, Stevens confessed to a newspaper that he was ‘hopelessly addicted’ to cocaine. The paper paid for his treatment in a drug rehabilitation clinic in Toronto.

This was a private problem played out on the front pages of the national press.

It was an addiction that almost cost him his life and eventually cost him his professional career.

Stevens drifted down the rankings and eventually dropped off the tour in 1993.

He headed back to Canada and undertook a number of jobs, as varied as a car salesman and lumberjack.

Stevens re-qualified in 1998 through winning the North American play-off and spent one more season on the circuit but could not recapture former glories.

Now 50, he still plays and last year won the Canadian Championship, which enabled him to play in the IBSF World Amateur Championship.

If a seniors tour ever got off the ground, Stevens would be a popular draw.

For all his problems, he contributed to a large degree in the excitement of that golden time when snooker ruled the TV airwaves.
Snooker Link

The WPBSA has today announced a new Pro Challenge Series of seven tournaments - open to anyone on the main tour - designed to give the players more playing opportunities.

This is good news. Players have justifiably complained that they are left twiddling their thumbs for long periods between tournaments.

If they don’t play in these new events then these complaints become less valid.

I would have preferred the new series to carry ranking status at a lower points tariff than the major events – as I suggested last January – because this would encourage participation from the better known players and thus increase their credibility and the publicity around them.

Now for the controversy: four of these tournaments are played under the standard rules. The other three are using only six reds.

I can’t help thinking it would be better to be one or the other: either the whole thing done properly or the whole thing done as ‘Super Sixes’ if this experiment really must be continued.

However, it was apparently players – Dave Harold and Michael Holt included – who helped come up with the format.

The bottom line is this: more tournaments is A Good Thing. OK, so they presumably won’t be televised but there is scope for internet streaming and anything that creates the impression there is something happening in the game should be applauded.

One of snooker’s problems is that it has ‘fallen under the radar’ of late because of the gaps between tournaments.

Those gaps are gradually being plugged: by the Championship League, the World Series and now this new Pro Challenge Series.

There is also reasonable money available - £5,000 for the winners of the 15 red tournaments and £3,000 for the winners of the 6 reds events.

If that doesn’t sound much to you then it’s more than you’d get for being in the club practising.

There isn’t sufficient money in snooker’s coffers at the moment to put on another three or four major ranking events.

But the new Pro Challenge Series at least means players will be able to do what they are supposed to do: play snooker.

PRO CHALLENGE SERIES DATES:
Pro Challenge 1
28-30 July
Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds

Pro Challenge 2 - Super Sixes
31 August - 1 September
Pontin’s, Prestatyn

Pro Challenge 3
9-11 November
Venue tbc

Pro Challenge 4
4-6 January
Venue tbc

Pro Challenge 5
16-18 February
Venue tbc

Pro Challenge 6 - Super Sixes
16-17 March
Venue tbc

Pro Challenge 7 - Super Sixes
8-9 April
Venue tbc
Snooker Link

The latest Snooker Scene podcast is a review of the season.

This was recorded last month. You can listen to it here.

The next podcast will be Clive Everton answering your questions.
Snooker Link

Stephen Maguire has undergone laser surgery on his eyes.

The world no.2, who had been struggling with his eyesight, didn't fancy trying the glasses made famous by 1985 world champion Dennis Taylor.

Maguire said: “It is what everyone who has had the surgery says, but I really wish I had got my eyesight corrected earlier.

"I used to need glasses for driving and watching TV. Playing snooker I could never get used to the special glasses you needed to wear, so I got by without anything, which was not ideal.

“Last season I felt my eyes strain under the tournament lights. I was aware that my eyesight was not as clear as it could be and I had to concentrate harder to see the pockets.

"I visited Optical Express in Glasgow who recommended laser eye surgery and within two weeks, I had gone through the consultation and had my treatment done.

“It was such a simple process and I’m delighted with my results. I have already changed the lenses in my old glasses to make sunglasses as I have no need for driving glasses anymore.”

The first test for Maguire will be an exhibition event in Beijing on July 7, which includes Stephen Hendry, Mark Allen and Liang Wenbo.
Snooker Link

The first snooker player I ever interviewed was a teenage Paul Hunter.

He was very shy, which was fortunate, really, because so was I.

Interviews and press conferences with snooker players are varied experiences. They are often mundane. Sometimes they are emotional. Occasionally they can be explosive.

The usual drill is to have the winner of the match in, unless the loser is a big name, in which case they have to spend an unpleasant ten minutes fielding questions from the finest flowers of snooker journalism when they’d rather be kicking a cat somewhere.

Some take losing better than others. Stephen Hendry has a few times been rendered completely speechless. Some others resort to swearing or even stomp out.

I have sympathy for this in retrospect. At the time I’m more concerned with how I’m going to pad out 25 paragraphs of purple prose without a single quote.

It’s not always the players who are the problem. When Hendry won his seventh world title in 1999, the post match press conference began with one hack, who had availed himself well but not wisely of the free bar several times during the course of the day, asking him how he’d been feeling on Christmas Day.

Nobody knew why.

Then there’s always the guy from the local paper who wants to ask what the player thinks of the venue just as they are opening up about something interesting.

Most journalists are of course just looking for a story. I’ve always tried to be respectful, although I did once get into a semi-heated discussion with Quinten Hann about his penchant for smashing into the pack.

That’s about as Paxman-like as I get.

In truth, the relationship between players and media is a little cosy. Too cosy, some may argue.

It’s certainly true that, at times, off colour behaviour by players has not been reported.

This is why it was such an irony that one of the only press conferences to take place without a single British journalist present – Ronnie O’Sullivan in China last year – ended up being such a big story.

God bless the internet.

Still, cosy it may be but this is much better than having to jump through hoops just to get a few quotes off someone, as happens in a few other sports.

The players are generally a credit to the sport in terms of how they give their time up for interviews.

I’ve been to press conferences that have threatened to last longer than some matches.

One such featured O’Sullivan after he was knocked out of the 2004 Irish Masters. It was like Jackanory. He couldn’t stop himself. And we lapped it all up: strange and yet profound as it all was.

The funniest part came about 20 minutes in when a German journalist arrived, explained he hadn’t caught the first part of the press conference and asked Ronnie if he could repeat it all.

Thankfully Ronnie declined, otherwise we’d all still be there now.

(This press conference went on so long and was so bizarre that I left before the end, fearing I might have a nervous breakdown at the absurdity of it all).

O’Sullivan can be great value like that, he can also be difficult. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise anyone.

I’ve seen Ronnie laughing and I’ve seen him almost crying, notably in Newcastle in 2001 when he talked darkly of hanging himself from the city centre bridge.

There have been other emotional moments over the years.

I recall a tearful Chris Small dedicating his LG Cup win to his late grandmother.

I well remember John Higgins bristling with anger when he announced he was withdrawing from the 2000 Grand Prix – having just reached the quarter-finals – because of a mix up over dates.

And then there was Hunter after he won what proved to be his last ever match, late one night in York.

Up close he was clearly very ill. That first interview with him felt like a lifetime ago.

Of course, the great shame is that such is the media’s growing ambivalence towards snooker that many of the great quotes and stories simply never made the papers, but maybe I’ll put them all together one day.

I think a lot of it would answer the constant sniping about the lack of ‘characters’ in the game.
Snooker Link

The World Under 21 Championship, due to be held in Kish Island, Iran in August, must surely be under threat following the recent unrest in the country.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office are advising British people not to travel to Iran.

The withdrawal of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and Republic of Ireland teams would decimate the field.

Various EU countries are threatening to recall their embassy staff, which would surely rule out a whole heap of other players.

The International Billiards and Snooker Federation, whose website is updated only sporadically, should make a statement about the event.

Remember, it did not take place last year and a decision now needs to be made whether to move it, albeit at very short notice.
Snooker Link

Mark Selby had been due to take part in last week's State of Snooker discussion but was dropped through lack of time.

However, he has now had his say on his website, where he claims none of the things Sir Rodney Walker has promised have happened, that the governing body should put on tournaments in Europe and that he can't understand why there aren't more sponsors.

What's interesting about this is that Selby is not a player with an agenda or someone who is looking to rock the boat.

He is merely articulating the frustrations of a top player who feels he should have more playing opportunities.

You can read his blog at his website here.
Snooker Link

OK, so I gave in and joined Twitter.

If you want to follow my pithy bon mots you can do so here.
Snooker Link