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Yet again Hendry turns up for a match and his opponent is putting in a virtuoso display. Thepchaiya un-Nooh is 3-0 up after little more than 30 minutes and he's made 3 tons.

He must be getting pissed off with this.

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Fecking Shaun Murphy whining that he has to play guys who might actually beat him. What an absolute brass neck he has. Feck me.

Here's the thing Shaun. You're one of the top players in the world, you shouldn't be worried about facing any amateur. "They don't have the same pressures we do". 😂 Aye, so they don't, trying to hold down some sort of job whilst remaining on stand by to play in snooker tournaments they might get into and having to pay hotels etc with limited or no sponsors. How much pressure do you think Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White are under to play snooker Shaun? Is Shaun Murphy really in a position to be concerned about finances anyway? He IS one of the top players in the world. He was runner up in the World Championship last year. I know snooker isn't the cash cow it once was but is he really in a position to be whinging about not being able to put food on his table?

Utter laughable heads gone from him. Lost any respect I had for him there to be honest.

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3 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Fecking Shaun Murphy whining that he has to play guys who might actually beat him. What an absolute brass neck he has. Feck me.

Here's the thing Shaun. You're one of the top players in the world, you shouldn't be worried about facing any amateur. "They don't have the same pressures we do". 😂 Aye, so they don't, trying to hold down some sort of job whilst remaining on stand by to play in snooker tournaments they might get into and having to pay hotels etc with limited or no sponsors. How much pressure do you think Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White are under to play snooker Shaun? Is Shaun Murphy really in a position to be concerned about finances anyway? He IS one of the top players in the world. He was runner up in the World Championship last year. I know snooker isn't the cash cow it once was but is he really in a position to be whinging about not being able to put food on his table?

Utter laughable heads gone from him. Lost any respect I had for him there to be honest.

What about when good, bible-bashing Shaun got caught in a hotel with an escort (while married)(allegedly)?

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34 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Fecking Shaun Murphy whining that he has to play guys who might actually beat him. What an absolute brass neck he has. Feck me.

Here's the thing Shaun. You're one of the top players in the world, you shouldn't be worried about facing any amateur. "They don't have the same pressures we do". 😂 Aye, so they don't, trying to hold down some sort of job whilst remaining on stand by to play in snooker tournaments they might get into and having to pay hotels etc with limited or no sponsors. How much pressure do you think Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White are under to play snooker Shaun? Is Shaun Murphy really in a position to be concerned about finances anyway? He IS one of the top players in the world. He was runner up in the World Championship last year. I know snooker isn't the cash cow it once was but is he really in a position to be whinging about not being able to put food on his table?

Utter laughable heads gone from him. Lost any respect I had for him there to be honest.

Yeah for a bit of context on the money thing, Shaun Murphy earned £200k for reaching the World final in May and has £413k on the two year ranking list. Si Jiahui earned £31.5k during his two years on tour. I think we can take a guess at who has more money worries.

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1 hour ago, MrWorldwideJr said:

Yeah for a bit of context on the money thing, Shaun Murphy earned £200k for reaching the World final in May and has £413k on the two year ranking list. Si Jiahui earned £31.5k during his two years on tour. I think we can take a guess at who has more money worries.

Depends how much he’s spending on fanny for hire tbf.

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8 hours ago, GiGi said:

Thepchaiya ends with 5 centuries in his 6 frames won ffs.

That'll be world rank 65 Thepchaiya with a career best performance.

Thepchaiya is world number 39, and that's the lowest he's been for years, he's spent most of the past 2-3 years hovering on the edge of the top 16.

He's pretty well known for being one of the highest scorers on tour outside of the very top players, just has no safety game to back it up (which isn't going to be an issue against Hendry at present), its not exactly a huge shock for him to do something like this. 

I think the issue is less that people keep pulling out career best performances when they play Stephen Hendry and more that any player in the top 50 or so is capable of looking like a world beater when put under absolutely no pressure by a player they must be able to see isn't good enough to trouble them any more.

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5 centuries in 6 frames has only been done once or twice before in this format. Thepchaiya is 65 on the one year list because he's been crap the past season. 

I don't disagree that Hendry is not putting people under any pressure but he's clearly inspiring the people he's playing against. 

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13 hours ago, MrWorldwideJr said:

Yeah for a bit of context on the money thing, Shaun Murphy earned £200k for reaching the World final in May and has £413k on the two year ranking list. Si Jiahui earned £31.5k during his two years on tour. I think we can take a guess at who has more money worries.

And yet we now have Mark Selby and Mark Williams agreeing with him as well as Neil Robertson doing so yesterday.

Am I missing something here or why are these top guys so annoyed about it? It's like Nadal and Djokovic complaining about having to play a wild card at a tennis major.

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1 minute ago, Skyline Drifter said:

And yet we now have Mark Selby and Mark Williams agreeing with him as well as Neil Robertson doing so yesterday.

Am I missing something here or why are these top guys so annoyed about it? It's like Nadal and Djokovic complaining about having to play a wild card at a tennis major.

Yeah I sort of expect it from Murphy but I'm a little surprised at the others.

Honestly, the first thing I take from pretty much all of their comments is that I'm not 100% sure any of them fully understand how the system works. Williams in particular seems to be complaining in general about the number of players on tour more than amateurs in particular. And Selby and Murphy are both making a far bigger deal out of the professional/amateur distinction in snooker than actually exists. Si Juahui was a pro last year and will be again at some point in the future, the only difference this year is that he isn't guaranteed entry to events and when he does get in they don't count towards the world rankings.

I think the root of it for these top guys might just be that they would rather start at say the last 32 and not have to play these early rounds which they probably view as a bit of a formality where all they can really do is slip up, they'd far rather not have to turn up until next Monday and only win 4 or 5 games for the title. So at the end of the day I think its mainly self interest - they would stand to benefit through byes if there were no amateur entrants and if the tour got smaller they would have to play fewer rounds to get to the later stages of events.

Sadly none of them really seem to have thought beyond that to the overall health of the game as a whole. Williams idea to make the tour smaller is particularly wild if he wants more people to be making a living from snooker. The relegation cut off at the end of each season is already the top 64, everyone below that drops off tour, if it went any further up the rankings than that then you would basically end up with pretty much everyone outside of the top 16 constantly worried about losing their tour card and therefore livelihood at the end of the season.

 

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2 hours ago, MrWorldwideJr said:

 the only difference this year is that he isn't guaranteed entry to events and when he does get in they don't count towards the world rankings.

I suppose changing that aspect might solve one problem but create another for those that want to guarantee their spot on tour?

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21 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

I suppose changing that aspect might solve one problem but create another for those that want to guarantee their spot on tour?

Yeah I think existing pros would resist that. However, given that the world rankings operate on a two year cycle and amateurs will by definition have very few or no points from the previous season I think the chances of someone actually making it into the top 64 and bumping a pro out as an amateur would be pretty remote, it would require a proper run to like a semi final or something.

I'm personally in favour of everybody entered in a tournament gaining points regardless of pro status but I think the main benefit of it would be that once an amateur does earn a tour card they could already have some points built up rather than having to start from zero and their initial seedings would be a little more representative, as opposed to it realistically being a way to qualify for a tour card directly.

 

EDIT: Also worth pointing out that, because some qualifying events got cancelled due to Covid, there are only actually 122 players with tour cards (i.e professionals) this season and 128 slots in every regular ranking event. So by extension there are 6 amateurs who are effectively guaranteed an entry to every tournament this season if they want one since they are first on the invite list but won't actually be able to build up a ranking over the course of the season. Even if you wanted to leave space open for a couple of wildcards at each event it seems a bit silly not to have offered at least four of them a tour card to fill up the numbers.

Edited by MrWorldwideJr
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Robertson struggling this afternoon. Astley should be 4-0 up going into mid session interval you could argue. 

Be a little poetic justice if Astley knocks him out. Currently 3-1 up :) 

Edited by Trackdaybob
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What are people's thoughts on BBC pieing the tournament until Saturday afternoon? They're becoming increasingly distanced from snooker and Eurosport keeps getting better IMO. 

I always used to look forward to switching to BBC coverage for the big events after months of Eurosport and droning Joe Johnson covering the smaller tournaments but the beeb are just so outdated now and barely even report on anything other than the 3 events they still broadcast, as if snooker doesn't exist until their cameras are on it. The old guard of commentators are the same, you can tell half of them don't watch most of the snooker calendar.

I'll be sticking with Eurosport for the big ones for the time being. 

Edited by GiGi
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On 26/11/2021 at 11:52, GiGi said:

What are people's thoughts on BBC pieing the tournament until Saturday afternoon? They're becoming increasingly distanced from snooker and Eurosport keeps getting better IMO. 

I always used to look forward to switching to BBC coverage for the big events after months of Eurosport and droning Joe Johnson covering the smaller tournaments but the beeb are just so outdated now and barely even report on anything other than the 3 events they still broadcast, as if snooker doesn't exist until their cameras are on it. The old guard of commentators are the same, you can tell half of them don't watch most of the snooker calendar.

I'll be sticking with Eurosport for the big ones for the time being. 

A petty thing that winds me up about the BBC events is their insistence on starting the programme at the advertised match start time so that we have to sit through the build up as we don't know when the match will actually start.

Beyond that I agree with you about the BBC coverage in general, its obvious that the likes of Taylor don't know who most of the players are outside of the established top guys - contrast that with the likes of Alan McManus who has either played against or watched pretty much everyone on the tour it seems. The peak was a couple of years ago when David Gilbert reached the world semi final at the end of a season where he had been in multiple ranking finals and made it into the top 16 and yet was treated by the BBC as if he was an unheard of nobody.

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