New Seniors Event Announced – The Top 16 Shoot-Out!

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This was announced yesterday by Jason Francis on social media and is now reported on the WSS official site:

World Seniors Snooker Championship Shootout Qualifying Event Unveiled

World Seniors Snooker (WSS) is delighted to announce that an additional qualification place will be made available to tour players at the 2025 World Seniors Snooker Championship following a change in the qualifying criteria

The top two players on the official World Seniors Snooker ranking list, as well as the top two on the ‘Race to the Crucible’ one-year list will earn their places in the Crucible Theatre, as previously announced, and they will now be joined by the winner of a newly announced ‘Top 16 Shootout’ event.

The 16 players qualifying for this new event will be those ranked between 3rd and 10th on both lists with the official ranking list taking precedence at all times.

Jason Francis, Chairman of WSS, said: “We want to be a tour that listens to its members. We have listened and we have reacted and it now the fight is not just for the top two spots on each ranking list, but also for the top ten.”

A full list of dates and venues can be found below:

2024

  • 9-11 August (Reading)
  • 27-29 September (Reading)
  • 11-13 October (Reading)
  • 22-24 November (Reading)
  • 13-15 December (Reading)

2025

  • 17-19 January (Newbury)
  • 7-9 February (Reading)
  • 7-9 March (Reading)
  • 4-6 April (Reading)

Amateur players must be 40 on or before the first days play in each event, while professionals ranked outside the top 64 at the start of the 2024/25 season must be over 45 on or before the first days play.

Entries for all events are now open at WPBSA SnookerScores and will close seven days prior to each event.

There is no doubt that Jason is investing himself 100% to further develop the Seniors Snooker Tour, a tour that badly suffered from the covid crisis and its aftermath. In the early years the tour relied a lot on the past legends of the sport. Those players have earned the privilege and are still attracting a lot of fans. But it’s not viable as a long term strategy of course and – to make it worse – some of the oldest players on the main tour stubbornly continue to play very wel, sit at the top of the rankings and refuse to retire. The rascals! 😡😉