The 2016 Q School was a series of two

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

tournaments held at the start of the

2016–17 snooker season The 2016–17 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 5 May 2016 and 1 May 2017. The number of ranking events was increased in 2016/17, with a target of 20 ranking events for 2017/18. A ...

. An event for amateur players, it served as a qualification event for a place on the professional

World Snooker Tour The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, ...

for the following two seasons. The events took place in May 2016 at the Meadowside Centre in

Burton-upon-Trent Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. At the 2021 census, it had a population of 7 ...

, England with a total 12 players qualifying via the two tournaments and the Order of Merit.

Format

The 2016 Q School consisted of two events. The two events had 182 entries competing for 12 places on the main tour, four players qualifying from each of the two events, with a further four places available from the Q Tour Order of Merit. All matches were the best of seven frames.

Event 1

The first 2016 Q School event was held from 11 to 16 May 2016 at the Meadowside Centre in

, England.

Fang Xiongman Fang Xiongman (, born 9 April 1993) is a Chinese people, Chinese former professional snooker player. Career Fang began competing at professional events in 2012, which included Players Tour Championship, Asian Tour events as well as wildcard roun ...

Christopher Keogan Christopher Keogan (born 26 August 1992) is an English former professional snooker player. Career From the town of Doncaster, Yorkshire in England, Keogan started playing snooker at the age of 6. In his early years he was coached by Steve Pre ...

Cao Yupeng Cao Yupeng (; born 27 October 1990) is a Chinese professional snooker player. He won the 2011 Asian Under-21 Championship, thus qualifying for the professional main tour for the 2011–12 season. In his first season on the circuit, he reached ...

and

Chen Zhe Chen Zhe (; born 28 February 1993) is a Chinese former professional snooker player from Shanxi who won five matches at the 2012 Q School to earn a two-year card to play on the World Snooker Tour starting in the 2012–13 season. He is based in ...

qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–3 * 4–0 * 4–0 * 4–1

Event 2

The second 2016 Q School event was held from 17 to 22 May 2016 at the Meadowside Centre in

, England.

Michael Georgiou Michael Georgiou (born 18 January 1988) is a British-Greek Cypriots, Cypriot former professional snooker player from Forest Hill, London, Forest Hill. He is a practice partner of Igor Figueiredo and Hammad Miah, who practises at Whetstone Snooke ...

, John Astley,

Alex Borg Alex Borg (born 5 June 1969) is a Maltese former professional snooker player. Borg currently resides in Mellieha, Malta. Career Borg first turned professional in 1991, and regularly appeared as a wild card in the Malta Grand Prix, where throug ...

and David John qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–1 * 4–0 * 4–2 * 4–1

Q School Order of Merit

A Q School Order of Merit was produced for players who didn't qualify automatically from the two events. Four places on the main tour were given to the leading four players in the Order of Merit,

Craig Steadman Craig Steadman (born 14 July 1982) is an English former professional snooker player. Career Early career Steadman began his professional career by playing Challenge Tour in 2001, at the time the second-level professional tour. He reached the ...

Jamie Curtis-Barrett Jamie Curtis-Barrett (born 19 April 1984 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire) is an English snooker player. Career After playing snooker from the age of 11, Curtis-Barrett drifted away from the game after the death of his grandfather who had been a huge ...

Ian Preece Ian Preece (born 23 June 1982) is a Welsh former professional snooker player, from the city of Newport. Preece first appeared on the main tour in 2003, after a successful career as a junior; he held the record as the youngest winner of the ...

and

Adam Duffy Adam Duffy (born 30 March 1989) is an English former professional snooker player. Duffy qualified for the 2011–12 professional Main Tour as one of four semi-finalists from the third and final 2011 Q School event. Career Debut season As a n ...

. The Order of Merit was also used to top up fields for the

where an event failed to attract the required number of entries. The rankings in the Order of Merit were based on the number of frames won in the two Q School events. Players who received a bye into the second round were awarded four points for round one. Where players were equal, those who won the most frames in the first event were ranked higher. The leading players in the Q School Order of Merit are given below, those with Q in brackets were awarded places on the main tour.

Two-season performance of qualifiers

The following table shows the rankings of the 12 qualifiers from the 2016 Q School, at the end of the

2017–18 snooker season The 2017–18 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 4 May 2017 and 7 May 2018. The season began with the pro–am Vienna Snooker Open in May 2017 and ended with the 2018 World Snooker ...

, the end of their two guaranteed seasons on the tour, together with their tour status for the

2018–19 snooker season The 2018–19 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 10 May 2018 and 23 June 2019. The season was made up of ranking tournaments, non-ranking tournaments and variant tournaments. In tota ...

. Players in the top-64 of the rankings retained their place on the tour while those outside the top-64 lost their place unless they qualified under a different category.

References

{{2016–17 snooker season Q School (snooker) 2016 in English sport 2016 in snooker Sport in Burton upon Trent