Snooker

Ali Carter: 'Maybe 90% of players on tour have got no money' - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/64609682

Interesting article with some forthright views from Ali Carter.

John Higgins is into the Champion of Champions event later this year after winning the Championship League.
He beat Kyren Wilson in the semi final and Judd Trump in the final.

The hearings into the suspensions are happening around the time of the World Championships, so those players will remain suspended whilst it's on. Chances for others there.

Mark King is another one who's been suspended.

Here's that all-important new ranking list:

https://wst.tv/rankings/

Brecel up to 2nd - almost toppled Ronnie, which is amazing given Ronnie's one-year tally is fairly poor.

Snooks' hero Maguire just scrapes in at #32

Si Jiahui is up to #36, just ahead of Jak Jones at #37

Jimmy White, despite his big talk, is #75

& so on down to Stephen Hendry who apparently won nothing, nor did Bai Langning.


Brecel is also 2nd on the one-year list, behind Mark Allen.


Given all the witter about Q School, I'm surprised to see over 150 names listed on it.

Two lifetime bans handed out as punishment from the match fixing investigation, Liang Wenbo and Li Hang. Eight other players get bans of varying lengths too.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/snooker/65641122.amp

Well, they've got tough.

The Chinese authorities have also weighed in, giving longer bans for Zhao Xintong and Yan Bingtao among others:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/65977212

Shaun Murphy has won The Championship League after defeating Mark Williams in the final. He was top of each group he played in and sealed victory in the first ranking tournament of the season.

Brief spat as 5 guys wanted to skip the NI Open to do some invitational event in humdrum Macau. The dates for the latter have been pushed back to right before Christmas, so the talk of disciplinaries have been put back too. Reading the BBC report, Tubs Murphy (who else!?) managed to slag both the 5 players for wanting to go, and also the WST for the fact that they wanted to skip a Tour event at all.