General Snooker Thread

[Bobfoc]

Anthony Hamilton has withdrawn because of concerns about his asthma.

[Baddar]

is Kyren Wilson getting a R1 bye, or is Hamilton being replaced?

[Chris2K]

Bye it sounds like, as Barry Hearn is blaming Hamilton for being selfish and playing the qualifiers knowing that there would be fans present for the main round.

Quote

"He is worried about his own health," Hearn told Talksport.

"The question I pose is why did he not withdraw before the qualifying competition, because by getting through the qualifiers he has effectively stopped someone else from going and earning a living.

"He entered a competition knowing while he was in that competition, he knew there was going to be fans present.

"Why did he not withdraw then instead of knocking someone else out and stopping them earning a living, instead of withdrawing afterwards so that we're a player short?

"He hasn't had asthma that started yesterday. He's had asthma and health issues for some time."

How dare he have asthma during a worldwide pandemic symptomized by poor breathing! Words cannot express how much of a twat I think Hearn is.

What also gets me is there are few sports where a crowd are less important, and in fact more likely to cause a distraction. At least with darts it's a constant noise that you can almost drown out, with snooker it's occasional coughs (not exactly ideal time for those) and chatting that gets amplified by the silence of everyone else.

[Bobfoc]

I really think some of the changes that were made when Hearn took over were really silly. Most of all, having walk-on music and having the crowd make loads of noise before the match, only to then insist that they sit in silence, is completely counter-productive.

Snooker should be about the easiest game to televise without a crowd. A few different applause sound effects would be really easy to find if you really wanted to replicate the atmosphere of a normal Crucible match. You also wouldn't have to worry about the "G'WON RONNIE" wazzocks.

[Baddar]

Clearly they're just thinking about the extra revenue ticket sales will generate.

Judd Trump has also criticised Anthony Hamilton.

[Bobfoc]

Judd Trump has always struck me as a bit of a knob. I really hope he isn't the one to break the Crucible Curse.

[Baddar]

Did the players earn money for actually qualifying? I know they're guaranteed 20k as a first round loser, but Hamilton must have had reasons for playing the quals if he knew he wouldn't play the main tournament. If it did earn him some extra cash, you can't blame the guy.

[Bobfoc]

I don't think the qualifying competition itself offers any prize money. A lot of tournaments now have all 128 tour players entering at the same stage, which means that anyone with a tour card gets some prize money, but I don't think that applies to the more exclusive events like this.

[Baddar]

In that case, playing the qualifiers is indeed odd. Not sure he deserves the shit he's been getting because of it, however.

[Bobfoc]

He might have been holding off on his decision in case more protective measures were announced. He said that the qualifiers were done really well, but he hadn't had reassurances that such safety would be assured at The Crucible. I can see why you'd be annoyed if you'd lost to him in the qualifiers, but I also find it hard to side with Barry Hearn, who's well known for treating the players as cash cows rather than human beings.

[Chris2K]

I expect he was hoping that people would see sense and not have fans in attendance due to, you know, the terrible decision it is.

[Chris2K]

Trump is coming across very badly, a sentence that gets used as lot but not normally for this one, as he's going after Ronnie for complaining now.

Criticising people who are concerned about catching a virus that has killed 669,000 people is not a good look.

[Bobfoc]

I hope he loses in the first round.

[Baddar]

Bound to win it now. 

[Bobfoc]

He's got to be favourite anyway. He's been the best player this season. As usual, I'll hope for a new winner. It would be good to see Ding finally be champion. I think he's the best player never to win it, and I include Jimmy White in that.

[Baddar]

I'd convinced myself Ding had won it years back, but that was the UK. 

[Bobfoc]

He's won the UK Championship three times. and The Masters once. Out of sixteen World Championship appearances (three of them were unsuccessful attempts to get through the qualifiers), he's only made the quarter-finals six times, though.

[Bobfoc]

Trump is 5-4 behind against Tom Ford at the end of the first session, having been 5-2 down. He came back from a 6-3 deficit in the first round last year, so I won't get excited.

[Chris2K]

And after all this madness, there won't be any spectators allowed in the venue from tomorrow onwards, so Hamilton would have been fine if they'd just seen sense from the start.

[Bobfoc]

How ridiculous this whole thing has been.

As for the matches themselves, all three first sessions today have ended 5-4. I didn't expect any of them to be close, given the gaps in quality between the respective seeded and unseeded players in the matches.