Tour Qualification routes confirmed for the 2019/2020 season

The WPBSA has today announced the qualification routes for the professional snooker tour in the 2019/2020 season.

As always the top 64 in the world rankings at the end of the current season will remain on tour for at least another year, while 30 players in all are currently on the first year of a two-year tour card and will also stay on tour for next season.

It has also been confirmed that, despite speculation that this would no longer be a route, the top eight players on the one-season list at the end of this season that are not in the top 64 on the two-year list, or one season into a two-year card, will be awarded a fresh two-year tour card.

Once again, 12 players will then be awarded tour cards via Q School and these will again be the four winners of the three events to be held at the end of the season. For the first time, two players will be awarded cards via the new Challenge Tour.

This will be decided by the season-long order of merit and with eight of the 10 events completed, Brandon Sargeant and David Grace are provisionally set to claim tour cards. Event nine is coming up this weekend (26-27 January) at the Star Snooker Academy in Sheffield, while event 10 runs from March 6-7 at the South West Snooker Academy in Gloucester.

The two tour cards allocated to the Challenge Tour replace the cards that were awarded to the winners of the EBSA play-offs in previous years.

Similarly to last year, two tour cards have then been allocated to the CBSA China Tour, the winners of the 2019 European Championship and the 2019 European Under-21 Championship will also receive tour cards along with the WSF Champion. The WPBSA have also confirmed that the WSF Championship runner-up will receive a tour card, something that was not confirmed going into last year's event, though eventual runner-up Adam Stefanow was invited to the tour at a later date.

Finally, the winners of the 2019 Oceania Championship (not awarded a card last year), the 2019 Americas Championship (last awarded a card in 2016) and the 2019 African Championship will all receive two-year tour cards.


Timeline of events: 

- 2019 Pan American Snooker Championship - Houston, Texas - January 30-February 3
- 2019 European Under-21 Championship - Eilat, Israel - February 19-22
- 2019 European Men's Championship - Eilat, Isreal - February 23-March 2
- 2018/2019 Challenge Tour, Final event - Gloucester, England - March 6-7
- 2019 Oceania Snooker Championship - New South Wales, Australia - March 14-17
- 2019 WSF Championship - Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE - April 1-7

Top 8 on the one-season list 

At the time of writing, the top 8 players on the provisional one-season list (inclusive of German Masters and Indian Open qualifying points) that are neither in the first year of a two-year tour card or currently inside the top 64 on the provisional end-of-season rankings are as follows:

1 - Eden Sharav (34th, £46,600)
2 - Ian Burns (61st, £28,600)
3 - David Lilley (competing as a Q-School top-up) (68th, £22,500)
4 - Rory McLeod (69th, £22,000)
5 - Joe Swail (73rd, £19,600)
6 - Alexander Ursenbacher (77th, £18,600)
7 - Peter Lines (78th, £18,500)
=8 - James Cahill (competing as a Q-School top-up) and Paul Davison (Joint 81st, £16,500)
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With a number of events still to go, the chasing pack are tightly bunched, with another four players within £1,400 of Cahill and Davison:

10 - Gerard Greene (83rd, £16,100)
11 - Zhang Yong (84th, £16,000)
12 - Ross Muir (85th, £15,600)
13 - Dominic Dale (87th, £15,100)


This is also subject to a lot of change not just on the one-season list but as players move into or out of the top 64 on the provisional end-of-season list. For example, currently in 66th position is Zhao Xintong who is on the first year of a two-year tour card, but is set to get into the top 64 after one year. Having qualified for the World Grand Prix, the £5,000 he would be guaranteed would take him into the provisional top 64, knocking out Anthony Hamilton.


There's still a long way to go until this will all be decided during the World Championship qualifiers in April, while the next few months will see a number of cards being awarded over the various international amateur competitions starting with the Pan-American Championship.