Championship League 2025

Draw for this is on WST site.

From a quick glance only 5 top 16 players entered:

Hawkins, Zhang, Si, Murphy and Wakelin (plus Carter as defending champ)

top 22 on top-up list are also in - so 23 players missing.

Presumably these are the 11 other top 16 players - Cao, Dott, Africa, Lim, Shehab plus 7 more who I haven't worked out yet.

from a quick glance names I don't remember seeing are:

Vafaei
McGill
Ishpreet
Akani
Doherty
Nasa
Fu

Prop wrote:

snoopy2608 wrote:from a quick glance names I don't remember seeing are:

Vafaei
M Davis
Ishpreet
Akani
Doherty
Nasa
Fu

Yates will be onto that like a bloodhound

updated my original post as Mark Davis is in - no McGill I think

Appears most placement in groups has been assigned using relative ranking positions rather than being drawn.

1-75 per end season carried forward points.
76-79 per end season points (the 4 who re-qualified for tour cards through the one-year list)
80-106 random draw?
107-128 per QSchool order of merit (1 to 22)

Yet to see the re-ranking schedule (has it been published?) but guess ranking points from the corresponding event two season ago will drop off following the completion of this year's edition. Assuming the new rankings will be used for the Saudi Masters there will be two main contenders for the final automatic pass through to that last 32. I reckon that Chris Wakelin will need to match Ali Carter's result to preserve his provisional top 16 place. Gary Wilson and Tom Ford have an outside chance if they win the Championship League - but even that might not be enough.

Hopefully when WST publish an article concerning the Championship League draw all will be revealed.

Here are the missing pros:
Anthony McGill
Cao Yupeng
Chatchapong Nasa
Ding Junhui
Graeme Dott
Hossein Vafaei
Ishpreet Singh Chadha
John Higgins
Judd Trump
Ken Doherty
Kok Leong Lim
Kyren Wilson
Marco Fu
Mark Allen
Mark Selby
Mark Williams
Mohammed Shehab
Neil Robertson
Ronnie O'Sullivan
Sunny Akani
Xiao Guodong
Zhao Xintong
African Champion

Surprised Dott isn’t playing. He needs the points after skipping the Worlds