The WPBSA and WST have announced the provisional tour card structure for the 2024/25 World Snooker Tour.
Q School
There are provisionally 12 tour cards on offer from the Q Schools, 8 from Q School UK/Europe and 4 from Q School Asia-Oceania. Presumably, this will mean just 2 Q School events for the UK with 4 cards from each.
My view: To put it simply, Q School is a very bad way to select players for the main tour. This needs to be scrapped in favour of Q Tour.
World Snooker Federation
Two places allocated to the World Snooker Federation have already been claimed. Ka Wai Cheung of Hong Kong China won the mixed gender WSF Championship to secure his place, while 17-year-old Bulcsú Révész claimed victory in the WSF Junior Championship.
See snookerscores.net for the full results from the WSF events
My view: These events are not the right way to select players for the main tour. The entry pools are too small as, although open to everyone, many simply cannot afford to enter them.
There needs to be qualification for the events and funded by national associations etc rather than the players themselves.
Q Tour
The newly-expanded WPBSA Q Tour Global will carry four places – one to the number one ranked player in UK/Europe, already confirmed as Michael Holt, while three more will be up for grabs at the Global Play-Off to be held in Bosnia and Herzegovina in March.
My view: I like the Q Tour but there needs to be a way to qualify for this without involving Q School.
World Women’s Snooker
The World Women’s Snooker (WWS) Tour, which was established as an official tour qualification pathway in 2021, will again offer two places – one to the Women’s World Championship winner and another to the highest-ranked player not on the World Snooker Tour. Should either Reanne Evans or Baipat Siripaporn win the world title again in March, the second card will also go to the next highest ranked player on the WWS ranking list.
WST
My view: The current pool of women is too small. The standard isn’t high enough to say that the best is good enough to compete on the main tour. The WWS could be a qualification for Q Tour.
Other places
There will be more places on offer to “recognised regional qualifiers from Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions, in addition to the CBSA China Tour” and “there may be additional Invitational Tour Cards and/or places for any player who qualifies for the final stages of the Cazoo World Championship at the Crucible, who otherwise would not earn a new tour card. Q School numbers may also be reviewed subject to tour numbers at the season end“.
My view: There will be around 30 of the current tour card holders who will probably have to go to Q School to try to retain their places. Those who don’t manage to get back on could do worse than to look at Michael Holt and Martin O’Donnell for inspiration as to how to deal with the situation.
Approximately 20 players will then have to consider their options as to whether or not they try to get back on the tour via the amateur pathways.
I would prefer a more straightforward approach of 24 players losing their tour cards and being replaced by 24 from a better structured secondary tour like the Q Tour.
The current options of choosing players from small pools, like age groups, small regions or the Women’s Tour, doesn’t work for me.
The only option for selecting players as within the best 128 players in the world, should be on merit from a level playing field.
Showcasing regions, ages or the women can be done by other means rather than have them compete on the main tour.
What do you think?