The Q School top-up list grants important opportunities to many amateur players.
A total of twelve players graduated from Q School at Ponds Forge in Sheffield in the last month.
The dozen competitors comprise eleven returning professionals, including veterans Fergal O’Brien and Rod Lawler, and just one rookie in the form of Jason Kendrick.
Scores of other hopefuls missed out on the chance to compete on the Main Tour as a pro during the upcoming campaign.
But for some of those amateurs all is not lost, with the Q School order of merit rankings providing a backdoor avenue.
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Should any ranking event fail to attract the required number of entries, the remaining spots will be filled by the Q School top-up list.
With the rankings determined by the number of frames won in Sheffield across the three Q School events, Zhao Jianbo places in first with 59 points.
The young Chinese cueist narrowly missed out in two Q School events, losing in the final round of both Q School Event 2 and Event 3 to Aaron Hill and James Cahill respectively.
Zhao’s disappointment will be eased somewhat by the likely eventuality of being invited to compete in several competitions throughout the next year.
There are set to be 130 professionals participating on the Main Tour during the 2022/23 season, but a lot of the ranking events will fail to boast a full entry list.
Ross Muir and Steven Hallworth are in second and third place, with Sunny Akani in fourth and Daniel Wells in fifth.
Q School Order of Merit (Top 20)
- Zhao Jianbo
- Ross Muir
- Steven Hallworth
- Sunny Akani
- Daniel Wells
- Florian Nuessle
- Farakh Ajaib
- Ross Bulman
- Ian Martin
- Kurt Maflin
- Michael Holt
- Haydon Pinhey
- Andrew Higginson
- Michael Georgiou
- Soheil Vahedi
- Brandon Sargeant
- Rory McLeod
- Ben Mertens
- Ka Wai Cheung
- Luke Simmonds
Featured photo credit: WST
Does the Asia/Oceania Q School offer any similar top-up opportunities?
I haven’t seen any confirmation of that either way, but I’m going to assume there won’t be considering there’s no mention of it here: https://wst.tv/zhao-tops-q-school-list/. At least in the ranking events anyway.
I’ve actually forgotten why it’s 130 rather than 128 players next season?
Mark Williams lost eight deciders last season, including five in matches that were best of 11 or longer.