What? ANOTHER World Cup? Snooker Wuxi 2019

[Kevin S]

And Germany get one on the board to avoid the whitewash.

Poland v Austria is still only in the fourth frame. It started nearly two and a half hours ago.

[Kevin S]

Norway have beaten Thailand 3-2 in something of an upset - the two Thai players are around the top 30. Straight into the next match on that table with HK vs England.

Meanwhile the final frame is down to pink and black, with Germany ahead by 12 points.

[Kevin S]

Yeah, that's good to see and nice that they have a post-Drago generation there as well.

Meanwhile this frame is still going!

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Always good to see Malta at things like this - snooker has always been big over there, a legacy of British rule no doubt. One of the Aussies is called Mifsud, he'll be Maltese as well.

[Kevin S]

Ha, obviously the effort of taking the screenshot helped... Kleckers is in amongst them now.

edit - and promptly misses a straight black.

[Kevin S]

Final frame the longest of the match. Surprised they didn't go for the re-rack here:

[Kevin S]

China A not taking any prisoners in their opening match with Germany, winning the first three frames. But then the format demands that they don't let up, and should try to win 5-0.

[Kevin S]

In other snooker news, Reanne Evans has won back the Women's World Championship:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/48739476

[Kevin S]

The blue ball will be placed on its spot and the cue-ball must be struck from on or within the confines of the D. Players have alternate attempts and the first player to make an unequalled pot will win the frame. The blue must enter the attempted pocket at the first attempt, i.e. flukes are not permitted, even if the ball finally enters the originally attempted pocket.

There's an example here but the heckling annoys me.

[URL="https://twitter.com/worldsnooker/status/1014147358375006209"]https://twitter.com/worldsnooker/sta...47358375006209[/URL]

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

What's a sudden death blue ball shootout?

[Kevin S]

Oh yes, and it's a very quick tournament too. There are 67 matches to be played and the final is on Sunday!

[Kevin S]

This page seems pretty useful to keep track of things. Note that the times are CEST.

http://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?event=851



And this is the list of players copied off the Wiki page. There's a notable absentee from Australia - and no Trump or Selby either, come to that.

1	China A	Ding Junhui	Yan Bingtao
2	Wales	Mark Williams	Ryan Day
3	Scotland	John Higgins	Stephen Maguire
4	Northern Ireland	Mark Allen	Jordan Brown
5	England	Kyren Wilson	Jack Lisowski
6	Belgium	Luca Brecel	Ben Mertens
7	China B	Zhou Yuelong	Liang Wenbo
8	Thailand	Thepchaiya Un-Nooh	Noppon Saengkham
9	Iran	Hossein Vafaei	Soheil Vahedi
10	Cyprus	Michael Georgiou	Antonis Poullos
11	Norway	Kurt Maflin	Christopher Watts
12	Ireland	Ken Doherty	Fergal O'Brien
13	Malaysia	Thor Chuan Leong	Moh Keen Hoo
14	Poland	Adam Stefanow	Kacper Filipiak
15	Hong Kong	Andy Lee	Cheung Ka Wai
16	Germany	Simon Lichtenberg	Lukas Kleckers
17	Israel	Eden Sharav	Shachar Ruberg
18	Australia	Steve Mifsud	Ryan Thomerson
19	Saudi Arabia	Omar Alajlani	Ahmed Aseeri
20	Switzerland	Alexander Ursenbacher	Luis Vetter
21	Malta	Alex Borg	Brian Cini
22	India	Himanshu Dinesh Jain	Lucky Vatnani
23	Austria	Andreas Ploner	Florian Nüßle
24	United Arab Emirates	Mohammed Shehab	Mohammed Al Joaker

[Kevin S]

Yep, Snooker is getting in on the international tournament fest this summer with its own competition in Wuxi, which Eurosport are covering (unfortunately it doesn't look like Quest are).

So how can this possibly work then? Well, there are 23 countries entering a pair of competitors, with hosts China permitted to enter two such teams. In the group stage, matches are played as a best of five (and all five frames are played even if you go 3-0 up). So if you have teams 1 and 2 each with players A and B the frames are 1A v 2A, 1B v 2B, 'Doubles', 1A v 2B, 1B v 2A.

There's four round robin groups of six teams, top two go into the QFs. Everything I've read suggests the ranking is based on frames won first of all, and not number of matches won.

If there is a tie in either of the first two places the following rules determine the positions:
- If two teams are equal, the winner of the match between the two teams will be ranked higher.
- If three or more teams are tied, a sudden-death blue ball shoot-out will be played.

Teams tied for position 3 to 6 will remained tied and share the prize money for those positions.

During the Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals, and World Cup Final, the eight qualifying teams are paired off in a head-to-head knockout. The format for these matches is a best-of-seven frame competition with the match ending as soon as one team wins four frames. These encounters are scheduled as two singles, a doubles frame, two reverse singles, another doubles frame, and a deciding singles frame if necessary.