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Thesnooker world rankings are the official system of ranking professionalsnooker players to determine their qualification and seeding for events on theWorld Snooker Tour and other tournaments, as well as their future professional status on the tour.
First introduced in the1976–77 season, world rankings are maintained by the sport's governing body, theWorld Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA); Each player's world ranking is based on their performances, in terms of cumulative prize money earned in designatedranking tournaments over the preceding two years. Every professional member of the WPBSA is assigned a ranking disregarding their activeness on the circuit.[1][2][3] Thecurrent number one in world snooker rankings isJudd Trump fromEngland, taken over fromNorthern Ireland'sMark Allen since 26 August 2024.
Other forms of World Snooker rankings include the one-year list, which only calculates the current season's earnings to date to qualify for thePlayers Series events; theWorld Women's Snooker (WWS) has its own women's only rankings; the pre-season qualifying eventQ School also produces aQ School Order of Merit rankings after each edition to decide the order of players topping up the main tour events when undersubscription of players occurs.
Tournament players are decided by their ranking to determine their stage of entering into different events, with some involving qualification matches; Whilst lower-ranked players have to go through the early and untelevised rounds of the tournament, the top 16 ranked players automatically qualify for the final stages of tournaments such as theWorld Championship and theMasters. Therefore, there is typically a lot of interest in which players are likely to maintain or acquire "top 16 status", as well as theworld number one in snooker. Conversely, players whose rank is below 64 at the end of the season are deemedrelegated, being unable to retain professional status in the following year by ranking position.
Tournament seedings vary from tournament to tournament, but the defending champion is usually allocated the top seed followed by the reigning world champion and the remaining seeds are taken from a "seeding list".[4][5] The introduction of the rolling rankings in 2010 facilitated updates to the seeding list throughout the season. Various "cut-off" points are selected at convenient stages during the season where the rankings are "frozen" and used as seedings for the following tournaments until the next revision.[3]
Until the2009–10 season, rankings were updated once annually, following theWorld Snooker Championship. The seedings for tournaments—with the exception of the top two seeds—followed the official season rankings.[6][7][8][9] "Provisional rankings", which had no official status in the game, were therefore being utilised to give an indication of a player's form based on the combination of ranking points accumulated in the previous season and the current season thus far.[10]
Prior to the introduction of the world rankings, the previous year's winner and runner-up were allocated the top seedings in the World Championship, held annually. As more tournaments were added to the calendar and more players joined the circuit in the 1970s, it became increasingly necessary to seed the tournaments, precipitating the "Order of Merit" for the1975–76 season. The system was very basic, with seedings based on the results of the last three World Championships, and rankings were formally introduced in 1976 after the World Championship for the1976–77 season using the same criteria. By the1982–83 season many more tournaments were being contested, and it seemed reasonable to take those results into consideration too. TheProfessional Players Tournament andInternational Open were awarded ranking status, working on the same system; theClassic carried ranking points from the1983–84 season, theUK Championship andBritish Open from1984–85. The revised system was now based on only the two previous seasons, and updated annually after the World Championship.[11][12][13][6] While the ranking point allocations have undergone modifications down the years, up until the2009–10 season the rankings were still updated only once annually following theWorld Snooker Championship.
The original "Order of Merit", created for the 1975–76 season and based on just World Championship results, awarded the winner five points, the runner-up four, semi-finalists three, and so on down to one point for players who lost in the last 16. The world rankings, introduced in the following year, used the same allocation. Subsequent tournaments that were assigned ranking status worked on the same system but with the World Championship from 1983 onwards carrying double points. The ranking point allocation was later revised slightly with winners of all bar the World Championship now receiving six points, runners-up five, down to one point for the last 32; the World Championship more or less stayed as it was with ten points for the winner, incrementally reduced by two points for each preceding round, but now awarded one point for the last 32 in line with the other tournaments. In addition to ranking points, merit and frame points were also awarded which were used as a tie-break when players were on equal ranking points.
When the game wentopen for the1991–92 season, the ranking point allocations (devised by the WPBSA chairman on the back of a cigarette pack)[10] were altered by several factors to accommodate the influx of new players. The tie-break system was dropped but players remain awarded incrementally more points for each successive round; should a seeded player lose their first match, they would receive only half the points allocated to the non-seeded losers in that round. The World Championship continued to award more points than the other events, but under the "open era" the points allocation often varied between events; the UK Championship traditionally had the second-highest tariff until the abolishment of the ranking points schedule.[11][14]
Ranking as of 28th May 2025 after the conclusion of both World Championships.
| WPBSA /Johnstone's Paint World rankings by the end of 2024-25 season[15] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Player | Points | Move |
| 1 |  Judd Trump (ENG) | 1,984,200 |  |
| 2 | Kyren Wilson (ENG) | 1,304,300 | |
| 3 |  Mark Williams (WAL) | 858,600 |  3 |
| 4 |  John Higgins (SCO) | 781,250 |  1 |
| 5 | Ronnie O'Sullivan (ENG) | 740,000 | |
| 6 |  Ding Junhui (CHN) | 606,000 | 4 |
| 7 | Mark Selby (ENG) | 558,000 | 3 |
| 8 |  Neil Robertson (AUS) | 547,050 | 1 |
| 9 | Barry Hawkins (ENG) | 540,050 | 2 |
| 10 |  Mark Allen (NIR) | 522,900 | 2 |
| 11 | Zhao Xintong (CHN) | 510,000 | New[note 1] |
| 12 | Zhang Anda (CHN) | 491,500 | |
| 13 | Xiao Guodong (CHN) | 469,000 | 1 |
| 14 | Shaun Murphy (ENG) | 435,900 | 1 |
| 15 | Si Jiahui (CHN) | 420,200 | 2 |
| 16 | Chris Wakelin (ENG) | 388,400 | 4 |
| World Women's Snooker rankings by the end of 2024-25 season[16] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Player | Points | Move |
| 1 |  Mink Nutcharut (THA) | 73,375 | |
| 2 |  Ng On-yee (HKG) | 67,125 | |
| 3 | Bai Yulu (CHN) | 44,750 | 1 |
| 4 | Reanne Evans (ENG) | 41,375 | 1 |
| 5 | Rebecca Kenna (ENG) | 31,500 | |
| 6 |  Anupama Ramachandran (IND) | 18,625 | 1 |
| 7 | Mary Talbot (ENG) | 13,625 | 1 |
| 8 | Tessa Davidson (ENG) | 13,500 | 1 |
| 9 | Baipat Siripaporn (THA) | 13,250 | 3 |
| 10 | Amee Kamani (IND) | 12,100 | 3 |
| 11 | Narucha Phoemphul (THA) | 11,050 | |
| 12 |  Narantuya Bayarsaikhan (MNG) | 8,975 | |
| 13 | Jamie Hunter (ENG) | 8,625 | 3 |
| 14 | Yee Ting Cheung (HKG) | 7,125 | |
| 15 | Man Yan So (HKG) | 6,225 | |
| 16 | Jessica Woods (AUS) | 5,500 | 6 |
Since the transition of world rankings from point-based tariffs set by the governing body to a prize money list for the2014–15 season, different events of the same tournament series usually maintain a similar level of prize money. TheTriple Crown and specifically the World Championship earn the player most points for rankings, whilst invitational event gains do not count into the rankings. The follow table shows the prize money from the round of 32 in selected ranking events held during the2024–25 season.
| Category | W | F | SF | QF | R16 | R32 |
| World Championship | 500,000 | 200,000 | 100,000 | 50,000 | 30,000 | 20,000 |
| Saudi Arabia Masters | ||||||
| UK Championship | 250,000 | 100,000 | 50,000 | 25,000 | 15,000 | 10,000 |
| Xi'an Grand Prix | 177,000 | 76,000 | 34,500 | 20,000 | 15,000 | 10,000 |
| International Championship | 175,000 | 75,000 | 33,000 | 22,000 | 14,000 | 9,000 |
| World Open | ||||||
| British Open | 100,000 | 45,000 | 20,000 | 12,000 | 9,000 | 6,000 |
| Home Nations Series | 21,000 | 13,200 | 5,400 | |||
| German Masters | ||||||
| Shoot Out | 50,000 | 20,000 | 8,000 | 4,000 | 2,000 | 1,000 |
Active professionalsnooker tournaments | |
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| Tour |
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| Ranking events | |
| Non-ranking events | |
| Series | |
| Related lists | |
