2018/2019 Season Preview

After a four week break following Q School, the 2018/2019 snooker season is set to get underway next week with the first set of tournament qualifiers in Preston. Once the opening rounds for the Riga Masters and World Open have taken place, the final stages of the Riga Masters will take place from July 27-29 in what will be the first full tournament of the new campaign.

The players have had a longer break than in previous years before the new season, but plenty has happened in the mean time with new players earning their professional debuts, new events and venues being added to the calendar and a huge announcement has been made by the WPBSA regarding two Chinese players.


Yu De Lu and Cao Yupeng suspended 

Yu De Lu and Cao Yupeng have both been suspended from playing on the tour and have been told they have a case to answer, following an investigation into alleged breaches of WPBSA rules.

This relates to alleged betting breaches by the pair, who will remain suspended until the conclusion of any hearings regarding the matter and the separate cases have been closed.

Yu De Lu's case relates to manipulating the outcome of five matches since 2015, failing to report two approaches to match fix, betting on snooker and failing to cooperate fully with the WPBSA's enquiry.

As for Cao Yupeng his case relates to manipulating the outcome of three matches since 2016 and failing to cooperate fully with the WPBSA enquiry.


At the time of writing the date of either case is unknown and therefore the length of time the players will be out of action is also unknown. For Cao Yupeng this comes after the best season of his career in which he made the final of the Scottish Open and the final of the Gibraltar Open leaving him ranked at 38 in the world prior to the 2018/2019 season while Yu De Lu is slightly lower in the rankings at 43.

The full statement on these two suspensions is available here.


Riga Masters and World Open Qualifying 

The first set of qualifiers for the new snooker season begin on Monday 2 July with three and a half days of last 128 action for the Riga Masters. Following that, the last 128 action for the World Open will take place from Friday 6 July until Monday 9 July with both of these qualifying rounds taking place at the Preston Guildhall.

At an early stage in the season, and as has become the norm on the circuit, there are several non-entries for both of these events.

Missing both the Riga Masters and World Open are: Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins, Hossein Vafei, Ashley Hugill, Hamza Akbar, Matthew Bolton and Mohamed Ibrahim. (This is as well as the suspended Cao Yupeng and Yu De Lu).

Missing the Riga Masters only are: Mark Selby, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Ken Doherty and James Wattana.

Missing the World Open only is: Martin Gould.

That means we'll have to wait a little while to see Ronnie O'Sullivan and World Championship runner-up John Higgins, while Ken Doherty is skipping Riga despite making the semi-finals of the event last season.

World Champion Mark Williams will not be appearing in the qualifiers much this season as the majority of his last 128 matches will be held over to the venue. His last 128 matches with Rhys Clark in the Riga Masters and Lukas Kleckers in the World Open will be both be played as part of the final stages. Defending champion Ryan Day has had his match at the Riga Masters held over and he will play Q School top-up Jamie Cope at the main venue. There are also two unconfirmed wildcards that will compete in this event and their last 128 matches will be played at the venue, so Jimmy White and Graeme Dott are the two lucky players to receive a holdover.

For the World Open qualifying, defending champion Ding Junhui has his last 128 match against James Wattana heldover along with the next two highest ranked Chinese players Liang Wenbo (Vs James Cahill) and Yan Bingtao (Vs Ashley Carty). On top of this, there are four unconfirmed wildcards in the draw so Neil Robertson, Mike Dunn, Ben Woollaston and Jimmy Robertson have all received holdovers having drawn one of these wildcards.


Additions and changes to the calendar

As with every season there have been a few changes to tournaments, new tournaments and some new venues added to the World Snooker Calendar.

The first of those changes is that the Shanghai Masters will now be an invitational event, and is returning to it's September slot in the calendar. The top 16 in the world will be invited to join a further eight Chinese players. Four of these will be the next highest ranked Chinese players (which would be Liang Wenbo, Yan Bingtao, Xiao Guodong and Zhou Yuelong if the rankings stay as they are at present). On top of this two players will be invited from the CBSA China tour and two from the China's Amateur Masters series.

The China Championship's place on the calendar has moved back a month from the end of August to the end of September. On this year's home nations series, the English Open has moved from Barnsley to Crawley for this year. The World Grand Prix will now be played in Cheltenham in a venue at the racecourse. The Preston Guildhall will now host the second event of this series, the Players Championship, and a new Tour Championship for the top eight on the one-season money list will debut in March 2019 and will be played in Llandudno.

The new venue's in Crawley and Cheltenham provide good news for snooker fans in the South of England who will now have a couple of events slightly closer to home, without taking much away from the North.


Players to Watch

As in the last two years, I will be picking out my top three new tour players to keep an eye on in the 2018/2019 season. In previous years I picked out Yan Bingtao in his rookie season and last year picked out Xu Si who would make a semi-final in his first few months on tour, so hopefully my selections will be just as successful again this time.

Ashley Carty - Ashley Carty earned his tour card through this season's Q School and is an exciting player that I have been looking to qualify for the main tour in recent years, so now that he has I believe he could do some serious damage. His heavy scoring helped him through Q School with some sublime performances and big results, including a victory against Wang Yuchen who had just dropped off the tour. Carty had come close in Q School 2017 where he overcame Martin O'Donnell 4-3 before losing to James Cahill in the penultimate round by the same score. That was enough to get him an invite to last year's Riga Masters and he defeated David Grace there to get through to the last 64 at the venue.

A run of results Carty had in 2015 show that with a little more experience and maturity in the game he could regularly collect good results in the his first season on tour. He qualified for the last 32 of the 2015 German Masters with wins over Robert Milkins and James Cahill before narrowly losing to Martin Gould at the main venue. He followed that with a win against Jimmy White to qualify for the China Open and carried that into his Welsh Open invite by defeating Michael Holt and Alfie Burden to make the last 32 in Cardiff. As well as that he whitewashed Kyren Wilson in the 2014 Australian Open qualifiers as an amateur, around 15 months before Wilson won the Shanghai Masters title. If Carty can get off to a bright start on the tour and build the kind of confidence and belief he must have had in 2015 as an amateur, then he could really go deep in a few ranking events this year, and he is certainly one of those players that is capable of a 'surprise' run to a quarter or semi-final in one of the slightly smaller events.

Luo Honghao - Luo Honghao is the WSF Championship and both by winning that title and what he achieved immediately after that he has demonstrated what he can do. At the age of 18 he is yet another young Chinese player who could shoot into the top 64 in no time at all. In winning the WSF Championship he whitewashed his opponents in four out of five knockout round matches. Only in the semi-final against Kacper Filipiak was there any hardship as he had to come through a deciding frame. Among his rivals in that tournament were Jamie Clarke who he saw off 4-0 in the quarters and Adam Stefanow who he showed few nerves in thumping 6-0 in the final. This also came after losing a deciding frame in the final of the World Under-21 Championship a few months earlier, where again he eased into the final. Against the pros he has already had some success, competing in the 2018 China Open just a couple of weeks after winning the WSF Championship.

He was invited as a wildcard and had to start out in the preliminary round against Basem Eltahhan. A 6-1 victory there put him up against Stuart Carrington in the last 128 on the same day and he would drop one more frame there to come through 6-2 against a quality opponent. Facing Anthony McGill in the last 64 you would naturally have assumed his run would end, but that was not the case. With two centuries and a run of 84 he saw off McGill 6-4 to put himself in the last 32 with a total of four centuries made to that point. Another century along with a break of 91 featured in his next match against Duane Jones, who had two century breaks of his own in a high quality encounter. Luo would eventually win in a decider before his run was ultimately ended by Tom Ford in the last 16. Those sort of results over a longer format, so close to a professional tour debut must give him so much confidence and it will be fun to see if he can use that to keep on producing big results over the course of this season.

Jamie Clarke - The world of snooker stands as one I believe to congratulate Jamie Clarke after his succession of near misses when it came to getting on the tour. The feat was finally completed in the EBSA play-offs in April as he beat Andy Hicks 4-2 before a deciding frame win against George Pragnall. Clarke's near misses date back to Q School of five years ago when he lost in the final round to Ahmed Saif. He fell in the final round of Q School again in 2014 to Zhang Anda, but also had successes against pro players in European Tour events during this period. In February 2014 he beat Luca Brecel 4-1 before beating Ben Woollaston and Anthony McGill later that year. In the 2015 EBSA play-offs there was more heartache as he lost a decider against Martin O'Donnell in another match that would have seen him earn a place on the tour. A couple of months after that, Clarke made the final of the European Championship before losing to Michael Wild. His third near miss in quick succession came when Boonyarit Keattikun beat Clarke 8-7 in the final of the World Under-21 Championship.

In February 2016 he was undone by fellow Welshman Jak Jones in the final of the European Championships and he must have been beginning to tire of this trend. April 2016 was a mixed time for Clarke as he was invited to play in the World Championship qualifiers, and secured a victory in the first qualifying round 10-9 against Jamie Burnett before narrowly losing out in the following round 10-8 to Xiao Guodong, showing the potential he has and the results he can gain now that he's on the circuit. Just a few days after that though, he had another chance to get on tour and lost another big decider to Elliot Slessor in the EBSA play-offs. To come back from all of those near misses, continue trying as hard as he clearly has done and to now to be on the tour is a fantastic achievement and an incredible show of mental strength. Blanking all of those deciding frame losses in the heat of battle in another decider against Pragnall this year in order to come through, is something the likes of golfers Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia would be proud of. (Garcia and Johnson both had several near misses in major championships before eventually landing their major glory, Johnson is now Golf's World number 1 - some inspiration for Clarke).

What should make Clarke proud is that so many others would not have been able to get over the line and keep going, so now that he is on tour he can put all of that behind him and start showing what he is truly capable of. Clarke is still only 23 and has a lot of time ahead of him, and a fair bit of experience in the bank having competed regularly in professional events as an amateur. Just last season he defeated top 32 player Xiao Guodong in a European Masters qualifier, as well as making the last 32 of the Gibraltar Open with wins over Sam Baird and Jamie Curtis-Barrett.



There are plenty of other rookies to watch out for like Joe O'Connor, Adam Stefanow, Kishan Hirani, European Champion Harvey Chandler and European Under-21 champion Simon Lichtenberg from Germany, who could all do some damage and take the snooker tour by storm in what promises to be an exciting 2018/2019 season.

Also coming up this week on the blog, I will have interviews with two of these pro tour rookies so keep an eye out for that, on top of a full preview for the season opening Riga Masters qualifiers.