Interesting news today as World Snooker have announced the ranking points schedule for the upcoming 2009/10 season will be amended, no doubt due to the loss of the Northern Ireland Trophy and Bahrain Championship events compared to last year…

As pointed out on Snooker Scene blog, the key changes are that the points for the Shanghai Masters and China Open tournaments have been raised, along with those for the Grand Prix and the UK Championship. Unchanged however are the points for the World Championship and Welsh Open which means that the latter is now unique in offering just 5,000 points to the winner.

Whether this is a good change I am not so sure. On the one hand I do believe that the points needed to be amended to bring things more into line with last season, but on the other I am struggling to see why the Welsh Open has not been brought up to the level of the two Chinese tournaments. What it also means is that the World Championship is not quite as crucial as it has been in the past relative to the other tournaments, something that I find questionable considering the significantly longer frame matches involved.

In any case at least it does mean that players who performed well last season are not gaining a significant advantage as they would have done had the points tariff remained unchanged, while at the same time those who struggled will have a chance to catch up with a good season.

The full schedule for 2009/10 is as follows:

You can view the schedules for previous seasons here at World Snooker.

From Pro Snooker Blog