Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2026/January

An anonymous editor, or possibly several anonyous editors, is/are making a number of changes to articles inlcuding adding qualifying events to lists of tournaments wins. (Sounds familiar...). See e.g. Paddy Morgan, Kingsley Kennerley, John Spencer (snooker player). A few of the edits, IMO, are OK so I haven't reverted those. If you have snooker articles on your watchlist please keep an eye out! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 17:59, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Also for the Scottish Masters from 1997 to 2002, the qualifying events are listed in the players' articles as tournament wins (not sure how long they've been there). Think it's a stretch to class those as a title. Andygray110 (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

The victories in the Scottish Masters that are listed are on the Snooker.org website, They added them as a separate event and title, just like the Masters qualifying tournament counts as a title.

That isn't the consensus we have. We don't include qualification events. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:31, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

So to be clear, the Masters Qualifying win for Neil Robertson should not be included in his non-ranking wins table? This table also includes the recent Crucible Cup which is a snooker 900 rules event. Is this okay? Thanks. Canary757 (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the Crucible Cup, something being on different rules isn't that much of a problem, but certainly not the Masters qualification event (or even when it was the Benson and Hedges championship). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:11, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

My edit here was reverted, citing that the "legend table does not allow for this configuration". I would like to make the point that the definitions used for the legend of the table does not account for the fact that the Championship League is a group-based format with league stages and group play-offs, which do not fit the definitions that the legend is meant for. Using "WD" for Championship League events, when the player clearly competed in it and then withdrew later for other reasons is not appropriate imo, because that implies the player did not even play in the event at all: using the reverted edit for this discussion, Zhao clearly played 3 groups of this event and then withdrew after Group 6 (probably so he could go and prepare for the German Masters), so to say WD is nonsense and misleading, considering we use WD primarily to indicate players who were expected to play an event and who chose to pull out. WD would make more sense on the CL Snooker when the player didn't play a single match in the event [ie entered, then had to be replaced].

Therefore, I would like to recommend that we should not be using the Legend codes -- as they're written -- on the Championship League (both its ranking and invitational formats) because they do not fit this tournament format and also do not make the slightest sense if taken as literal as they're given. It would be more logical that we specify the furthest group the player reached in the event if they competed in the event (eg for the invitational Championship League, we should use `GX` -- where X is the group number they stopped at -- WG referring to them participating in the Winners Group but not participating in the play-offs and then SF/F/W as usual for the Winners' Group play-offs), and use a symbol or note to denote any player who technically could play in a subsequent group but chose to withdraw for various reasons. This would avoid misleading readers and be more accurate. For the ranking version, 1R/2R/3R for the first 3 stages, with F/W on the final, would probably work well enough.

Thoughts welcome please. @Andygray110 @Nigej @Lee Vilenski @HurricaneHiggins @BennyOnTheLoose @KDayne CitroenLover (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe that indicating a player withdrew from a tournament when they actually withdrew from a tournament (regardless of their reasons) is "misleading readers" regardless of whether they withdrew prior to the tournament began or on the day of the final. I don't agree the Championship League is a particularly special case purely because of it's format as a withdrawal is still a withdrawal. Also not keen on disapplying how the table works for one tournament as that's just asking for trouble; it would be better to either change the approach for all tournaments or not all.

But I do agree that WD could be improved as it is quite stark and doesn't signify the stage a player reached. I reckon it would be simpler to add an inline nb note next to WD to indicate the tournament stage reached before the player's withdrawal - this is already used in Zhao's table to indicate the reason for tournament withdrawals during his suspension. Andygray110 (talk) 14:45, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd be using RR and having a note. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:22, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski Saying RR with a note would work, although I'm concerned that if we don't link to the specific group they reached, it would also be confusing if you don't read the individual page, as it would potentially imply it was just "one large Round-Robin group". This is also a problem when -- validly -- we do not link to the individual edition tournament page for players who withdrew, so no context can be obtained for the withdrawal short of abusing the notes feature, which I'm not a fan of doing as it already stretches columns [such as in the Zhao page example where we have notes in the 2022-23 column]. The CL Snooker being the way it is makes it very unique from all other tournaments, so I feel like it might be better to handle it separately (but without creating a new entry in the legend table to make it stand out). I would hope readers would be able to understand the nuance themselves without it needing to be explained somewhere below the table.

@Andygray110 I get your points, however the CL Snooker is a very unique format where the current set up of these performance tables would not have taken it into account. Its the only tournament using round-robin groups: the invitational version is also the only tournament where you can progress to the play-offs of Group 1 but move into the next group and continue in the tournament (the ranking event version does not do this: in that version, only the top player of the group progresses, the rest get eliminated there and then). So we really need to be treating at least the invitational version with a different application of the legend description, since that table is assuming every single tournament are straight knock-out single elimination tournaments, which this tournament basically isn't (except for the Group Play-Offs).

I would agree with you that a WD is a WD, however this should only apply in cases such as that with Zhou Yuelong, who had signed up to play in the tournament but was expected to join in Group 7: he then withdrew before that group commenced (which meant someone could replace him in the group), so that is definitely a WD, but Zhao's withdrawal isn't really the same in this format, because he'd played the three groups before it and earned money from it. You could argue we shouldn't be using WD on players who withdraw half-way through events and should be noting the stage they reached with a separate indicator of WD, but I just want to focus on the Championship League for now because it is just a fact that its format is unique and thus needs a different way of being handled in these tables (if we're consistent in application for a tournament, it should be fine, we don't need the CLS to be consistent with other tournaments because its just not lol). --CitroenLover (talk) 15:45, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

RR^[a]

Seems like a suitable way to handle this. Player did play in event, note explains all details. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:08, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

There are other tournaments that have used a round-robin setup at certain stages of the tournament e.g. 2006 Grand Prix where Mark Williams withdrew. So there are other tournaments to consider with similar setups other than the Championship League (Six-reds is another). A note seems to be the easiest solution. Andygray110 (talk) 17:46, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Personally, I think this highlights a problem (that we have discussed before) about these tables. 1R could mean the last 16, or the last 128. RR could mean the 128 round or the last four. It doesn't accurately explain where the player managed to progress too. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:49, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I think it's difficult to find a solution that works. The limitation with the present setup is as you pointed out, whereas an alternative L128/L64 visual is also troublesome as it doesn't indicate for some tournaments that a L16 elimination is a first round elimination, and that could mislead some readers into thinking the player progressed through a few rounds. I guess that's where the tournament wikilinks in the table come in useful for info that can't really be visualised in the table. Andygray110 (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 You're right that historically, other tournaments have done round-robins, but I'm only really bothered about the tour as it stands, where group-stage formats are basically not used anywhere other than the CLS (let's pretend the WST Pro Series never happened for the purposes of this lol). It would help if we could nail down a format for one tournament (so for group stage tournaments, lets set a format that works in the CLS, since its the most prolific example of group-stage formats in the last 15 years; and for single elimination knock-outs, lets set a format that works for, say the World Championship), and then replicate that across all other events.

We could also do with merging duplicate entries (like how the Shoot-Out and Shanghai Masters get shown twice because the tournaments used to be of a different status than now: eg Shoot Out was NR, now its ranking, so its even more confusing).

I personally would rather the tables were wider in terms of the individual season columns to allow us to be more flexible than super narrow. This would allow us to have more space to have more text in each individual cell. For example, if we do what I did on Zhao's table recently and start colspanning/rowspanning repeat entries, we'd save ourselves a lot of editing time as we wouldn't need to repeat the same thing over and over. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins your thoughts on the above would be welcomed as well (both on the initial proposal, and also on the idea of colspanning/rowspanning repeat entries in the performance tables where visible). I have another proposal in mind, which I'll post separately over weekend. -- CitroenLover (talk) 20:55, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@CitroenLover, I agree that it's inappropriate to use WD if a player has competed in the event. Typically a withdrawal happens before an event begins and suggests that the player did not compete at all. I think your other proposal sounds good as well, but will wait till you post your other ideas over the weekend and weigh in again. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:25, 30 January 2026 (UTC)