Championship League Preview

Kicking off the new year of snooker as always a select few will be taking a trip down to Crondon Park Golf Club for the Championship League snooker event. Not many people give this event much coverage or the time of day whatsoever, but with top players involved every year and a place in the Champion of Champions for the overall winner out of the 25 players set to be involved it's well worth keeping an eye on.

The format is the same as usual with the winners of each of 7 qualifying groups going through to make up the winners group at the end of it all.

In each qualifying group every player plays each other once over the course of two days, with the top four in the league table at the end of that qualifying for the semi-finals. 5th place in the group, along with the losing semi-finalists and losing finalist move on to the next group in the list (until group 7 of course). Places 6th and 7th in the qualifying group are therefore eliminated at that stage to play no further part in proceedings.

With all of that in mind, here are the groups for the 2016 Championship League:

Group 1 (Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th January)

Ronnie O'Sullivan
John Higgins
Barry Hawkins
Ricky Walden
Mark Williams
Ryan Day
Robert Milkins

Group 2 (Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th January)

Mark Selby
Judd Trump
Joe Perry
+ 4 players from Group 1

Group 3 (Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th January)

Marco Fu
Stephen Maguire
Michael White
+ 4 players from Group 2

Group 4 (Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th January)

Stuart Bingham
Neil Robertson
Graeme Dott
+ 4 players from Group 3

Group 5 (Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd February)

Mark Davis
Kyren Wilson
David Gilbert
+ 4 players from Group 4

Group 6 (Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th February)

Martin Gould
Matt Selt
Michael Holt
+ 4 players from Group 5

Group 7 (Monday 29th February and Tuesday 1st March)

Liang Wenbo
Ali Carter
+ 1 Player 'To be Confirmed'
+ 4 players from Group 6

Winners Group (Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd March)


As you can see there Ronnie O'Sullivan has entered into the very first group as he looks to prepare for the Masters. In fact his very first group match is against his Masters first round opponent Mark Williams. With the first two groups being before the Masters 8 of the 10 players that will be involved in the groups are playing in the Masters, with the exceptions of Ryan Day and Robert Milkins.

Defending champion and World Champion Stuart Bingham enters the tournament for group 4, while one spot in group 7 has yet to be confirmed according to the official championship league website but i'm sure we will find out that missing link before too long.

Not many of the higher ranked players have actually chosen to give the event a miss this time, but Ding Junhui and Mark Allen have once again decided to give it a miss, and after his withdrawal from last years event through illness Shaun Murphy has chosen to give it a miss, having been turned off of the event after featuring in six of the eight 2014 groups, winning the fifth to qualify for the winners group.

Other than that the next highest ranked not to be involved is current world number 26 Alan McManus, so as you can see we have a very strong haul for the event as things stand.

As well as Bingham: Marco Fu, Joe Perry, Judd Trump and Martin Gould are the other former winners involved in the tournament but with so much quality in the event it would hardly be a surprise of any sort to see a new name on that roll of honour (that also includes Ding Junhui and Matthew Stevens as past champions) and it could quite easily come from the lower ranked players featuring later in the groups.

Guys like Kyren Wilson coming in for group 5 will be looking to seize an opportunity because the latter groups are certainly there for the taking, and it wouldn't even be a surprise if somebody like Matt Selt and Michael Holt from group 6 or former runner-up Ali Carter in group 7 won their groups and went on to win the entire thing.

Starting off by looking at Group one though, it will be interesting to see how guys like Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Williams shape up ahead of their Masters matches, while Ricky Walden was one guy struggling for form in the latter parts of 2015 so he will be looking to find some over the next couple of days. Barry Hawkins has never won a match at the Masters so will be hoping to go there with some nice wins under his belt even if the matches throughout the tournament are only played over the best-of 5 frames short format.

Robert Milkins form was also a bit shy of the mark in the back half of 2015, while guys like Ryan Day were starting to go nicely and Ryan is one man who can concentrate solely on the group matches ahead without thoughts of being in the Masters.

If you backed me into a corner and forced me to pick a winner of just Group 1 for now then it would have to be John Higgins. After re-finding his form during 2015 he is probably the strongest player in the group form wise, and should certainly win enough matches to make it into the semi-finals on Tuesday.


Just as I did last year for this event I will be back with daily updates during the Championship League to after an opening days play both the results and an as it stands group table courtesy of my famous 'notepad pictures' that got their first outing a year ago. Cue Action Blog is certainly the number one place to be for Championship League updates and be sure to keep in touch with my Twitter page for very frequent updates throughout the days play, and certainly for all of the different qualification scenarios as the groups progress on the second day of the two.