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| Alan McManus must reach the lat 16 to secure a spot at the Players Championship Finals. Image: Sky Sports |
With that in mind, there is a larger than normal presence of British and European players entering the tournament, with the hope of securing one of the few available slots for the potentially lucrative event to be held at the Guild Hall in Preston.
Click HERE for the current provisional Asian Order of Merit at snooker.org.
Players Championship Places
From this list, you can see that each of the three Asian Tour event winners, Joe Perry, Liang Wenbo and Chinese amateur Ju Reti already have places assured for the event but the next five spots are still up for grabs.
Those places are currently filled by Lu Haotian, Scott Donaldson and Michael Holt, all of whom have opted into the event (the latter opting out of his spot in this week’s Championship League Group 7), plus Mark Selby and Xiao Guodong who have not entered the event.
Selby has already qualified for the Players Championship finals by way of the European Order of merit, so ninth on the list Liu Chuang is currently in line to secure the last spot on the list. However neither Xiao or Liu have entered this event and both are at risk of losing their place in the finals should a player further down the list put a good run together this week.
Looking a little further down the list at players who are looking to snatch a last minute place at the Players Championship finals, the first professional name you come to is Alan McManus.
The experienced player faces need a run to at least the Last 16 to bridge the 1,000 point gap between him and eighth but could’ve had an easier route securing his place. In the first round he faces fellow Scot Michael Leslie, then in the last 64 he may face Paul Davison, fighting for his tour place, and in the last 32 he could face either Michael Holt, Anthony McGill or Kurt Maflin. Not an easy task either of those three.
Anthony McGill, currently 14th on the Asian Order of Merit, needs a run to at least the semi-finals to secure a late Players Championship spot. He also faces a tough draw, with Kurt Maflin in the first round, possibly Michael Holt in the last 64, possibly Alan McManus in the last 32. Mark Davis, Ken Doherty, Ben Woollaston and Tom Ford also occupy his quarter of the draw.
Other players with an outside chance of taking a late Players Championship place include Tian Pengfei, who must reach the semi-finals, Yu Delu, who also needs at least a semi-final run and Ben Woollaston who also must reach the semis, although a run to the final will probably be required.
After a disappointing season on the European Tour, Graeme Dott failed to secure a top 24 spot in the European Order of Merit, finishing 28th. With at least 3,000 points to make up to climb into the top eight, he’ll need a run to the final to stand any chance of securing a spot at the Players Championship finals.
Tour Survival/Tour Card Battle
In addition to the race for the Players Championship finals, there are also four tour cards available for the next two seasons on the tour, for the top four players not already qualified via means of the European Order of merit or at top 64 spot.
They are currently occupied by Liu Chuang and amateurs Ju Reti, Lu Chenwei and Zhou Yuelong, with Reti the only guaranteed recipient of a tour card from the list.
The only other current tour player within a reasonable shout of securing one of these spots will be Tian Pengfei who currently sits at 67 in the provisional money list.
He needs a run to at least the last 16, if not better depending on other results. He’s got a fairly decent chance of achieving this, with only one professional in his section before reaching the last 16, Thanawat Tirapongpaiboon.
I’ll be providing a daily update around the situation of all of these players but you can keep up to date with the day’s results with snooker.org results page.
Unfortunately as it’s a CBSA organised event, not television coverage is available within the UK or via liveworldsnooker.tv, but streaming of these Asian Tour events is usually provided by the My147 website, with coverage of at least the main arena table, and sometimes of the back tables.
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