The ban means that he will miss the upcoming International Championship and Shanghai Masters for which he had already pre-qualified, and along with this he will miss the Champion of Champions, Northern Irish Open, UK Championship, Scottish Open, German Masters (due to qualifiers being in this period) and the Masters.
Bingham has also been ordered to pay £20,000 towards the costs incurred by the WPBSA during the investigation, though no other fine was handed down from the board as "there is an inevitable financial impact arising from the suspension".
The current world number 10 was found guilty of betting on snooker matches between 2003-2015 which included a series of bets on his own games from an account in his manager's name, as outlined in the full statement issued by the WPBSA on Tuesday morning.
A further three months and one day of the suspension are themselves suspended as long as Bingham is not found to have committed further breaches between now and 31 October 2018.
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| Bingham celebrating victory at the 2017 Welsh Open |
One further point that is important to note is that, while Bingham was found to be betting on his own matches either himself or through third parties, the WPBSA concluded that, "There is no suggestion at all that Mr Bingham's bets impacted on his performance or the result of any match".
In Layman's terms, there is no inference that any part of this investigation is related to match fixing of any kind.
Bingham is credited for co-operating immediately with the board's investigations in certain areas, guilty pleas on a number of his charges and "seeking some professional help regarding his gambling" whilst hastily adding in the sanctions document that there was no finding that Bingham is suffering from a gambling addiction.
I would like to add that while today's suspension may harm Bingham's reputation in the eyes of many, he has also supported the tour greatly playing in events far and wide, and was always very generous with his time towards me and my blog personally and for that I remain grateful.
This is also by no means the first case of a player being caught out for betting on snooker, with Kurt Maflin, Joe Perry and Alfie Burden receiving 'suspended suspensions' over the course of the last few months the details of which can be found in the links attached.
For the tour, it means that Anthony McGill's place in the Champion of Champions is locked in due to Bingham's absence, while Neil Robertson will be the 16th member of the line-up thanks to his Hong Kong Masters win, as long as the International Championship is won by somebody already in the field. It also frees up a spot in the provisional race to the Masters which would see Neil Robertson move up from 17th to 16th for now, though he remains just less than £3,000 clear of Liang Wenbo.
Meanwhile, Bingham's scheduled opponents in the International Championship (Robbie Williams) and the Shanghai Masters (Akani Songsermsawad) will presumably receive walkovers to the last 32 of the respective events.
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