Last week World Snooker published the Order of Play for the inaugural APTC1 event which will take place in Zhangjiagang, China from tomorrow, but with little other information made public by the governing body, click below for what we do know about the first Asian PTC…
The Players
With 81 entrants, now 80 following the withdrawal of new professional Michael Wasley, the field is considerably lower than is often seen at a regular PTC events. At first glance this may appear surprising given the availability of ranking points equivalent to UK and European PTC events, but as Michael Holt explained to me on Twitter a couple of days ago, there is more to the story than meets the eye:
“There’s been a massive balls up with trying to get visas. Qualifiers haven’t been able to get our invitation letters on time. There are a few players in the same boat. Couldn’t risk entering early in case you didn’t qualify because you would get fined for not going. Then they changed it so that you could pull out with no fines. They also extended the entry date which did us really because I left it to the last day to enter which meant I couldn’t get an invitation letter for my visa in time. So extending the date was a waste of time. Ironic thing is if they’d not extended the date we’d have entered earlier and got the invitation letter. Balls up from the start by all, lesson learnt, hopefully by ALL!!”
As Michael says, hopefully this situation will not be repeated at the remaining two APTC events of the season and there will be more professionals involved. For ease of reference, the tour players who will be competing in APTC1 are as follows:
- Mark Williams
- Stephen Maguire
- Stephen Lee
- Ding Junhui
- Stuart Bingham
- Mark Davis
- Peter Ebdon
- Dominic Dale
- Marcus Campbell
- Tom Ford
- Marco Fu
- Mark King
- Robert Milkins
- Xiao Guodong
- Ben Woollaston
- Matt Selt
- Michael White
- Liu Chuang
- Yu Delu
- Alfie Burden
- Ben Judge
- Zhang Anda
- Li Yan
- Tian Pengfei
- Michael Wasley (withdrawn)
- Chen Zhe
- Cao Yupeng
Along with the professionals, there are of course several Asian players involved, but some starting in a wildcard round and others already through to what is effectively the last 64, but how did they get there?
Again, there has been no official confirmation of this, but someone who has helped to shed some light upon the situation has been regular blog commenter who has posted regular updates on what appear to have been regional qualifying events staged during recent weeks on the comments section of a previous article.
Can I Watch?
There has been no specific announcement as to whether there will be live streaming from the APTC events, but looking at the liveworldsnooker.tv website, particularly the schedule page, I have noticed the following:
“All 14 Players Tour Championship and 8 Qualifying events are available to view Worldwide throughout the year. These events marked in Green and Blue in the Calendar.”
With six European PTC events, four UK PTC events and the PTC Grand Finals, that would appear to leave three spaces which presumably are for the Asian PTC events, suggesting that they will indeed be streamed online.
Ranking Points, Tour Cards and Grand Finals Places
For clarification, ranking points equivalent to the UK and European PTC events will be available from the APTC events. What is not clear is from APTC1, with relatively few entrants and all professionals coming in at the last 64 stage, will first-round losers receive 360 points as they would at a regular event for a last 64 run?
Otherwise as has been confirmed, the winner of each event will also qualify for the PTC Grand Finals towards the end of the season, as will the top four players on a new Asian Order of Merit which be based upon the three APTC events. Furthermore, these four players will also earn a tour card for the 2013/14 season.
Match Schedule
You can view the match schedule for the tournament by clicking here.
The action gets underway tomorrow (Monday), with the wildcard round, as well as local hero Ding Junhui in the evening session in the first of the last 64 matches.
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