New Ranking System?

[rambon]

Not sure where to put this, so I'll plonk it here and see where it goes.

On the (thus far woeful) BBC coverage of the tournament (more of that in another thread) Steve Davis let it slip last night that "if the changes that are proposed happen, there will be a rolling ranking system along the lines of what tennis and golf have".

The look on John Parrot's face was one of total surprise as he hadn't heard anything of this, so I am assuming that Steve let slip something that had previously been advancing behind closed doors.

Now I am a big advocate of this, as the disparity between the Top 16 in the World after one World Championship and the Top 16 before the next can be rather large. I just wondered what everyone else thought, seeing as it is clearly on the minds of the proposed new board.

[goldengirl]

I think it's a great idea! It will really throw up some great matches I think. I was looking at WC draw and asking what some of the players had done to stay in Top 32/16 - how many matches had they won - especially in the light of Zang's performance! I think a lot of the players would not make it through to latter stages if they were in more qualifying stages.

[JanieWatkins]

This has already been published by Barry in his letters to the players.

They would start the first ranking event of the season with the seedings taken from the start of season rankings.

Thereafter it would be rolling rankings/seedings.

[rambon]

This has already been published by Barry in his letters to the players.

They would start the first ranking event of the season with the seedings taken from the start of season rankings.

Thereafter it would be rolling rankings/seedings.

I guess JP hasn't read his mail yet then

I see this as the first step out of the dark ages....

:snooker:

[Alex0paul]

How would they fit the World qualifiers in between China and the Crucible? Also it may see ticket sales plummet as people would not know who they would be seeing as some people just go to watch a certain player.

[rambon]

How would they fit the World qualifiers in between China and the Crucible? Also it may see ticket sales plummet as people would not know who they would be seeing as some people just go to watch a certain player.

It just means slightly increasing the gap between China and the Crucible.
or
You freeze the Top 16 for the World Championships after the Welsh Open for the sake of organisation... There are many ways to do it

Neither problem is insurmountable with a little bit of thought....

[gettingbetter]

I don't like the idea personally. The fact that there has only been seven world number 1s is one of the main reasons. You have to work hard to be the best. Having more than one world number one in a season would cheapen things for me.

With that, I'd like to think there is a better option. Maybe having the qualifiers have more points for qualifying than currently - I think something like that is in place, but if you have a higher weighting, it would definetly encourage the 17+ ranked players to lift thier game, likewise, those in the 16.

[Odrl]

I'm not a big fan of this particular proposal. Here's my reasoning, posted on another thread:

And finally, let's discuss the changes to the ranking system... I have always believed that the current ranking system is the fairest system available to snooker at this point in time. A lot of people suggest that we should only take a number of the most recent tournaments into account, and the rankings should be updated after every tournament. I'm not a fan of this myself. Let's say there is a player who reaches the final of the World Championship, and then mostly the 2nd round for a number of tournaments after that. He is ranked somewhere around 11th or 12th. He reaches the semi-final of the next WC, which is a better result than his ranking suggests, but his ranking actually goes down because the previous WC results are no longer relevant. It would be even tougher for people to follow, if a good result wouldn't necessarily mean going up in the rankings.

Now, you might say that the current system is even worse in this respect, because it cuts off an entire season. That's true of course, but the fact that it doesn't apply immediately makes it less bad. The provisional rankings on the other hand are updated after every tournament, and they make sense because the players with the best results get the most points. They change gradually throughout the season, so there are no sudden changes to confuse people.

As for the same match-ups in every event, statistically they are already unlikely to happen under the current system, so it's more to do with there being so few tournaments that the luck can't even itself out. And this is not a particularly bad thing in my opinion. You need some players meeting each other a lot, because that builds up rivalries and grudges.

And then there is also the problem of having qualifiers for one event played before the TV stages of another, which is something that happens in Hearn's calendar as well. It's not a big deal, but if you want more current rankings, this can't be happening.

[rambon]

I'm not a big fan of this particular proposal. Here's my reasoning, posted on another thread:

You make a fair point, but if the representative sample is a big enough size, then the ranking is fair.

What's more, you could argue that he didn't do as well in the tournament as he did 12 months previously, therefore his ranking SHOULD go down....

[Migtsf]

In my opinion, more important than what ranking system is used, is what events are going to award points. If lottery events like the proposed World Open are going to feed the ranking list, the rankings will be a joke no matter what system they'll use.

[beechy1212]

Only my personal opinion but going on what i've watched this season, there is a maximum of 8 top players. Everyone else from 9-64 aren't that far apart. Hendry and King, for example, look terrible a lot of the time. I've just seen Cope struggle. Dreadful Snooker. Maybe the pressure to stay in the top 16 is seriously effecting players like Hendry. If this pressure was to be no more, we might well see some of the greats of yesteryear start performing on a consistent basis and make Snooker more interesting again for everyone.

[Odrl]

You make a fair point, but if the representative sample is a big enough size, then the ranking is fair.

What's more, you could argue that he didn't do as well in the tournament as he did 12 months previously, therefore his ranking SHOULD go down....

Yes, I suppose it should, because his performances over the last number of tournaments are now worse than they were before. But the main complaint about the current system is that it takes into account results from more than two years ago. Now imagine a system where the rankings are updated after every tournament, so that when the new points are added, the points from the corresponding tournament two seasons ago are removed. That means that the seeding for this 2010 World Championship would still be heavily influenced by the huge points from the 2008 WC, which would then become completely irrelevant two weeks later. So you would basically have a huge shift in the rankings after every WC, first of all because of the big points it awards, and also because of the big points that are taken away. Kind of like the way it is now.

I think a good solution would be to only count a certain percentage of points earned in the not very recent tournaments. For example, the five most recent tournaments would have full points, and then you could knock off 10% for the 6th most recent tournament, 20% for the 7th, and so on. I think that kind of system would most realistically indicate who the current best players are, and in what order, but the changes would also be quite gradual rather than dramatic. But of course, you would have people complaining that they can't understand how the system works, just like now...

In my opinion, more important than what ranking system is used, is what events are going to award points. If lottery events like the proposed World Open are going to feed the ranking list, the rankings will be a joke no matter what system they'll use.

I couldn't agree more. The rankings should NEVER take into account any tournaments that have matches shorter than best-of-9. Those distances are for kids, not for the best players in the world.

[bigbreak]

Not a new idea. A rolling ranking system has been in use in Scotland for the season just finishing. Worked a treat!

[rambon]

I think a good solution would be to only count a certain percentage of points earned in the not very recent tournaments. For example, the five most recent tournaments would have full points, and then you could knock off 10% for the 6th most recent tournament, 20% for the 7th, and so on. I think that kind of system would most realistically indicate who the current best players are, and in what order, but the changes would also be quite gradual rather than dramatic. But of course, you would have people complaining that they can't understand how the system works, just like now...

Which is roughly speaking the golf method, and believe it or not, the method I was advocating here a few years ago....

[Moroney]

Rolling Rankings

The rolling system works perfectly in tennis. Once in a blue moon you get the anamoly of, for example. player A beating player B in a grand slam final and player B over-taking him/her in the rankings (cos in the previous years event, A had won it too, and B had lost in the first round), but that is so rare.

As regards China Open and World Champs being so close, tennis and Golf and Darts all have entry decided by a cut-off date a while before, and with seeding being decided on the list the week before.
So in Snookers case, the cut-off date for rankings for entry would have to be the last tournament completed before the start of the qualifying - simple.