Zhao moved one frame away from a maiden semi-final berth at the 2025 World Championship, a feat that will trigger an unusual rule in the snooker rankings.
The Chinese cueist orchestrated a 12-4 quarter-final lead over Chris Wakelin on Tuesday and requires just one more frame on Wednesday to reach the single table setup at the Crucible Theatre.
The 28 year-old struggled to reproduce his best form but was ultimately able to take advantage of a significant dip in standard from his opponent, who had accounted for Neil Robertson and Mark Allen’s exits earlier in the competition.
If Zhao completes the job as expected in the third session, he will continue his remarkable run from the very first round of the qualifiers.
The former UK champion had already become the first player under amateur status to reach the last eight of a World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
But should he extend his journey to the semi-finals, he will also become the first player to activate a lesser-known clause in the snooker rankings.
Zhao, who was among the ten players who were involved in the Chinese match-fixing scandal, had already safeguarded his professional status for next season through his Q Tour performances.
After serving his 20-month ban, the former UK champion returned in September and duly dominated the feeder amateur circuit – winning four times and compiling a brace of maximum breaks.
Those results sent him to the top of the Q Tour rankings, which awarded him a two-year professional card and a spot in the World Championship qualifiers draw.
There had been a lot of confusion in recent weeks, however, surrounding what would actually happen if Zhao earned enough money to, in theory, break into the top 64.
In the past, amateur players have appeared on the one-year snooker rankings list that is used to determine fields at the World Grand Prix, the Players Championship, and the Tour Championship.
Generally, though, we have not seen amateur players listed on the official two-year rankings comprising the current professionals on the World Snooker Tour.
Yet it has been confirmed by WST that if Zhao Xintong were to reach the semi-finals of this year’s World Snooker Championship, he will be given a top 64 ranking.
The £100,000 prize money for reaching the last four in Sheffield, plus the £10,000 that he won for reaching the last 32 of the UK Championship in November, would be enough to take him up to number 57 on the provisional end-of-season standings.
This is important, because while the original two-year card meant that Zhao would have to start from scratch with zero ranking points, this new one-year card for breaking into the top 64 will ensure that he can keep those valuable ranking points earned from prize money this season.
“Former UK Championship winner Zhao is already enjoying the deepest ever run in this event by an amateur – though he is set to rejoin the pro tour next season,” the WST article said.
“In fact if he reaches the last four, the guaranteed prize money of £100,000 will be enough to lift him into the top 64 of the Johnstone’s Paint World Rankings, which means that going into 2025/26, the 28-year-old will retain the ranking points he has earned this season.”
It’s a bizarre situation that many probably felt would never happen, but the fact that it is set to transpire does raise the point as to whether or not it is actually fair.
The biggest question being, why is any amateur player suddenly able to appear on the official two-year WST snooker rankings list when this has never happened before?
It very much seems like a convenient way, given his overall marketing appeal, to guarantee Zhao’s rapid rise back up the rankings – which has been helped, of course, by his own tremendous performances on the baize.
If he does reach the semi-finals and trigger this just-confirmed clause, it will push a lot of current professionals down one rung on the rankings ladder.
With world number 48 Dominic Dale retiring and to be removed from the list, currently ranked in 64th place on the provisional end-of-season rankings is Zak Surety.
An uncomfortable scenario, whereby an unlucky competitor could have been told that they had in fact been relegated after all, seems to have been avoided, though.
That’s because Surety is only competing in the first year of a two-year card and therefore already assured of his main tour ticket for the next campaign either way.
What will happen to the card originally awarded to Zhao Xintong through finishing first on the Q Tour remains unknown.
The former German Masters champion reached as high as number six on the official snooker rankings list before his ban in 2023.
If he were to go all the way in Sheffield and capture the 2025 World Snooker Championship title, the £500,000 champion’s cheque would secure his immediate return to the top 16.
For the full 2025 World Snooker Championship draw, results, and schedule, click here.
Featured photo credit: WST
You are still missing out a very important fact here.
Under WPBSA rules, he wasn’t eligible to enter Q Tour because he could not be said to be “in good standing” with his National Federation.
No amount of shoulder-shrugging or it-is-what-it-is can get round this.
It’s not really being missed when that has already been discussed. Whether anyone agrees with it or not, that situation has already been commented on by the WPBSA previously, as per the quotes in this article: https://snookerhq.com/2024/09/10/zhao-xintong-enters-q-tour-event-snooker-ban-ends/
Both cases do, however, highlight again the WPBSA/WST’s apparent tendency to just make things up as they go along.
Snooker has its own meanings of terms like ‘amateur’ and ‘ranking tournament’, which everyone new to snooker needs to grapple with, which sometimes defy logic.
In snooker an ‘amateur’ is someone who doesn’t currently hold a WST ‘tour card’, which means they don’t get autometic entry into WST’s tournaments, but have to rely on a fairly loosely defined series of exceptions for topping up draws. In reality, whoever finishes top of the Q School Order of Merit usually gets invited to everything anyway. This is because the 128-player model is never borne out in practice.
What ‘amateur’ does NOT mean, is someone who isn’t making a living out of playing. However, there are players who aren’t on the WST tour who depend solely on prizemoney from tournaments, and there are many players who have outside sources of income. Indeed, it’s almost impossible for players further down the rankings to survive on the paltry prizemoney available to them. One very good example of this was shown very graphcally in the 2021 UK Championship. Si Jiahui (an ‘amateur’) was completely dependent on prizemoney (overseas players don’t have working VISAs), whereas Shaun Murphy (the ‘professional’) had numerous outside interests: commentating, punditry, exhibitions, appearance fees, promotional work, coaching.
Now in terms of ‘fairness’ in rankings, it’s necessary to define what the purpose of the ranking system actually is. Is it intended to list the players in order of strength? Or is it to reward players who have done well in certain tournaments? Since the introduction in the 1970’s, snooker has always used a ‘reward scheme’, rather than attempt to measure the players’ strengths.
With that in mind, is Zhao’s position in the top-64 (perhaps even higher) fair? Well not really, because he’s being rewarded after receiving an amateur wildcard, by the decision of a committee. However, in terms of seeding, it’s much fairer that Zhao should be ranked closer to his true strength. If he was entering at Round 1 from the start of next season, his opponents would be particularly unlucky (a sign of unfairness). That’s what happened to Cheung Ka Wai in this World Championship. He could be relegated from the tour in 12 months’ time because of that.
With all these special clauses that we only seem to discover post-fact (or, as you say in your comment: “making things up…”), it’s now necessary to have 4 spreadsheets to calculate rankings! Barry Hearn claims that this ranking system is the simplest available – one that even snooker fans can understand.
Of course a freelancer model, with an incremental ranking system, avoids all these inconsistencies and sources of unfairness.
I tend to agree with both Lewis and DC here. World Snooker do have a tendency to make up criteria or policy a little ad hoc. I’m also siding with Lewis as the rankings should reflect the strength of a player’s results and if they’re allowed into main tour events then receiving points seems a fair consequence.
Zhao didn’t actually play as a top-up as he was an invited amateur through performances on the baize for both the UK and World Championship.
I remember Liverpool winning the European Cup in 2005 and finishing fifth in the Premier League, meaning they were initially unable to defend their title. The rules were quickly changed, rightfully in my view, to allow the holders a spot in the following season’s competition.
I think he won the money, he deserves the points and the placement. He played only a few tournaments on the pro circuit this season, so getting as far as he did is an achievement. And he gives up a safe two-year tour card in return. He will also give up pretty much guaranteed price money by winning against lower-ranked players in some qualifying rounds.
I long thought that snooker should have an ELO style rating or factor in the won/lost frames ratio and centuries to determine the ranking. Higgins/Williams were just one frame apart, but it will make a difference of 50k ranking points, which feels not reflecting the actual strength of the players.
Yes, that’s why I used a frame-based Elo formula for my ranking list. For example there are players who lose most of their matches 4-0 or 5-0, whilst other players lose them 4-3, 5-3 etc. That’s very different, and might indicate that a (young) player has potential.
But the main reason for Elo (or other incremental scheme) is that it can include all players in the world, so we don’t need ‘professional’ status, tour cards, fixed-size tournaments, and force all players to live in the UK.
i don’t think a win should be determined by frames won, a win is a win no matter how you paint it, if you win 10-0 or 10-9 makes no difference to the win period, that only creates an environment for speculation, and debate as to it’s fairness, which will give rise to what you advocate against, example the guy lost 10-0 then loses his next 5 matches but looses 4-3 in all, he now has 15 frames to the good the player that won 10 nill loses his next 5 matches 4-0 he is behind but that’s wrong right, how can he be behind in points won, in wins he is ahead, only in frames is he behind, losing 6-0 is not the same as 6-1 your method just creates more confusion, a win is a win and a loss is a loss period,
personally i think it was wrong to of banned zhao considering the likes of john higgins was caught red handed on camera taking a bribe to fix a match, which we who watched it could see, and truthfully should of been banned for life but only received a 1 year ban, compare that to zhao, it’s a disgrace, but everyone conveiniantly forgets that, now another point i think should be far more fare is ranking points should not be determined buy money earned but matches/tournaments won, money earned for points is effectively buying your way to the top, no one deserves any favouritism that is unfair to everyone else, period, if anyone has been treated unfairly it is Zhao,