On the first day of 2019, here are my wishes to all of you, readers of this blog: be healthy, be happy, look after yourself and your loved ones and enjoy your life!

Regarding the World Seniors tour here are some news shared by Jason Francis on the World Seniors dedicated forum on Facebook:

Dear All,
I wanted to send everyone a message and update as our year comes to a close. As you can see I am working hard on New Years Eve!

We have 4 qualifiers left this season
Beijing, Houston, Newbury and Leeds.

Some of these are filling up and I urge you not to leave it too late to enter.

Now a few updates for you.

We are working hard on next season but also on securing the longevity of this tour. We don’t want ranking events for one season, I don’t want to be in the position of not knowing when events are going to be, we want a situation like we have with Hull where we know the Uk Seniors will be there for the next 3 years – obviously this sort of deal takes time across the tour.

European Open
I am still not in a position to announce this event, the players who qualified will of course get there place in the final event when we do it. This situation is not ideal and is exactly why the point I make in the previous paragraph is important.

World Seniors Championship.
We are making progress on this but I cannot seeing this being done for March. We did move these dates from the calendar a few weeks ago, likely this event will be May June and constitute our last event of the season.

I am conscious of trying to space qualifiers out, trying to fund 3 qualifiers in a month is hard, trying not to clash with other events is hard, trying to get prize money down to the quarters everywhere is hard – is hard! lol Ideally I would like no more than one a month and I have to understand that globally we may reach a position where qualifiers may clash with each other if placed in separate continents.

The ranking list is established and will become more and more important moving forward. I want to set a limit on entries to qualifiers to 128, the reason being I understand sometimes a smaller field gives less chance for ranking points BUT I will also not want to restrict entries if demand exceeds this.

I am constant reviewing formats and listening to all, I have a full day planned with Shaun Murphy and Jason Ferguson to map out next season and we will be making some changes, all designed to make it rely less on me personally but allow it to grow and give players more opportunities.

The amount of different winners this season is testimony to the short format and means more people get the chance to progress to a big event. I don’t want us to lose that and become a tour where the same two or three faces qualify for everything… but the opportunity is there for a player to dominate like Jonathan did last season.

NORBRECK

Its clear there is not the appetite I believed there would be for this, the costs involved in staging this and placing tables is large and I think money could be best served paying out to players and staging it in a club. I will make a decision on this in January. Also of course the planned date will in effect not be our end of season.

Rest assured I am totally committed to making this tour bigger and better but without forgetting why most people do play on it….

May I wish you a Happy New Year… I hope we all support Patrick and Rodney who will represent the tour in Goffs this weekend.

Jason is working tirelessly to make this tour work. Thank you Jason for everything you did and do. As the tour grow, it’s obvious that changes are needed. Jason is constantly seeking the players feedback in order to allow the tour to grow whilst, at the same time, trying to meet the wishes of the players.

The Seniors Irish Masters is only three days away. I’ll cover that tomorrow, as well as a special  exhibition in Lincoln featuring Jimmy White.

Let’s have a great 2019!

#DareToDream