Snooker World Rankings

The snooker world rankings are the official system of ranking professional snooker players to determine their qualification and seeding for events on the World Snooker Tour and other tournaments, as well as their future professional status on the tour.

First introduced in the 1976–77 season, world rankings are maintained by the sport's governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA); Each player's world ranking is based on their performances, in terms of cumulative prize money earned in designated ranking tournaments over the preceding two years. Every professional member of the WPBSA is assigned a ranking disregarding their activeness on the circuit. The current number one in world snooker rankings is Judd Trump from England, taken over from Northern Ireland's Mark Allen since 26 August 2024.

Other forms of World Snooker rankings include the one-year list, which only calculates the current season's earnings to date to qualify for the Players Series events; the World Women's Snooker (WWS) has its own women's only rankings; the pre-season qualifying event Q School also produces a Q School Order of Merit rankings after each edition to decide the order of players topping up the main tour events when undersubscription of players occurs.

Overview

Tournament players are decided by their ranking to determine their stage of entering into different events, with some involving qualification matches; Whilst lower-ranked players have to go through the early and untelevised rounds of the tournament, the top 16 ranked players automatically qualify for the final stages of tournaments such as the World Championship and the Masters. Therefore, there is typically a lot of interest in which players are likely to maintain or acquire "top 16 status", as well as the world number one in snooker. Conversely, players whose rank is below 64 at the end of the season are deemed relegated, being unable to retain professional status in the following year by ranking position.

Seedings and cut-off

Tournament seedings vary from tournament to tournament, but the defending champion is usually allocated the top seed followed by the reigning world champion and the remaining seeds are taken from a "seeding list". The introduction of the rolling rankings in 2010 facilitated updates to the seeding list throughout the season. Various "cut-off" points are selected at convenient stages during the season where the rankings are "frozen" and used as seedings for the following tournaments until the next revision.

Provisional rankings

Until the 2009–10 season, rankings were updated once annually, following the World Snooker Championship. The seedings for tournaments—with the exception of the top two seeds—followed the official season rankings. "Provisional rankings", which had no official status in the game, were therefore being utilised to give an indication of a player's form based on the combination of ranking points accumulated in the previous season and the current season thus far.

History

Prior to the introduction of the world rankings, the previous year's winner and runner-up were allocated the top seedings in the World Championship, held annually. As more tournaments were added to the calendar and more players joined the circuit in the 1970s, it became increasingly necessary to seed the tournaments, precipitating the "Order of Merit" for the 1975–76 season. The system was very basic, with seedings based on the results of the last three World Championships, and rankings were formally introduced in 1976 after the World Championship for the 1976–77 season using the same criteria. By the 1982–83 season many more tournaments were being contested, and it seemed reasonable to take those results into consideration too. The Professional Players Tournament and International Open were awarded ranking status, working on the same system; the Classic carried ranking points from the 1983–84 season, the UK Championship and British Open from 1984–85. The revised system was now based on only the two previous seasons, and updated annually after the World Championship. While the ranking point allocations have undergone modifications down the years, up until the 2009–10 season the rankings were still updated only once annually following the World Snooker Championship.

Former points system

The original "Order of Merit", created for the 1975–76 season and based on just World Championship results, awarded the winner five points, the runner-up four, semi-finalists three, and so on down to one point for players who lost in the last 16. The world rankings, introduced in the following year, used the same allocation. Subsequent tournaments that were assigned ranking status worked on the same system but with the World Championship from 1983 onwards carrying double points. The ranking point allocation was later revised slightly with winners of all bar the World Championship now receiving six points, runners-up five, down to one point for the last 32; the World Championship more or less stayed as it was with ten points for the winner, incrementally reduced by two points for each preceding round, but now awarded one point for the last 32 in line with the other tournaments. In addition to ranking points, merit and frame points were also awarded which were used as a tie-break when players were on equal ranking points.

When the game went open for the 1991–92 season, the ranking point allocations (devised by the WPBSA chairman on the back of a cigarette pack) were altered by several factors to accommodate the influx of new players. The tie-break system was dropped but players remain awarded incrementally more points for each successive round; should a seeded player lose their first match, they would receive only half the points allocated to the non-seeded losers in that round. The World Championship continued to award more points than the other events, but under the "open era" the points allocation often varied between events; the UK Championship traditionally had the second-highest tariff until the abolishment of the ranking points schedule.

Season rankings

Ranking as of 28th May 2025 after the conclusion of both World Championships.

Points distribution

Since the transition of world rankings from point-based tariffs set by the governing body to a prize money list for the 2014–15 season, different events of the same tournament series usually maintain a similar level of prize money. The Triple Crown and specifically the World Championship earn the player most points for rankings, whilst invitational event gains do not count into the rankings. The follow table shows the prize money from the round of 32 in selected ranking events held during the 2024–25 season.

See also

* List of snooker ranking tournaments
* List of world number one snooker players

Notes

References

External links

World Rankings
at World Snooker Tour

{{Snooker lists