The Sangsom 6-Red World Championship gets under way on Monday in Bangkok.
Scotland’s Stephen Maguire returns to defend his title while Mark Davis, a three-time world champion in this discipline, also features.
World no.1 Mark Selby, the winner in 2010, takes part as well but other former champions Ricky Walden and Jimmy White are absent.
The tournament in Thailand sees a mixture of Main Tour professionals and global amateurs invited in a shortened version of the traditional game.
In truth, I have no idea how it was decided which players to invite and who to leave out.
The result is a concoction of top 16ers, middle-ranked pros, familiar amateurs, less familiar amateurs, and a bunch of Thais.
The 48 hopefuls have been divided into eight groups of six players each, where a round-robin format will initially decide the last 32 knockout phase.
The likes of Selby, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui and John Higgins will start the week as the favourites but, really, it’s very difficult to predict this format – especially as it is rarely played.
I probably wont be taking much of a close interest in proceedings this week but that is not to say that I’m against it.
In fact, I think it is a good thing to have variety on the calendar and there is certainly sufficient enough space on it this summer and autumn to warrant a 6-Red edition – indeed, maybe there should have been a few more events!
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but, if that’s the case, just don’t watch it.
For others, it’s a quick-fire alternative to the regular format and one that is easy to dip in and out of intermittently.
With around €60,000 on offer for the champion, the players involved will certainly be taking it seriously.
