Next year’s world snooker champion will receive a highest-ever fee prize of £300,000, the game’s governing body confirmed this week.
World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn wrote to all Tour players to confirm the structure of the 2013-14 season, informing them of the schedule and the prize monies involved.
Hearn said that prize money across the season would rise from £6.4 million to at least £8 million, while in nine of the 12 ranking events, all players would take part in the first round.
Hearn has long mooted the removal of the seeding system and the top 128 professional players on the Tour will now be entered into the first round of seven tournaments, with the UK Championship in York and the Welsh Open in Newport seeing all games played at the venue.
The World Championship will remain seeded for the top 16 – members of which will be invited to the Masters – but Hearn said in his letter that “it is simply wrong to allow for one player seeded above another to receive guaranteed income at the levels now on offer just for showing up.”
Hearn, who has been running the sport since 2010, also added he expected every player to support the Australian Open, in what was perhaps a warning to current world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan.
The game’s most famous player has previously had trouble handling the worldwide schedule and will make his return from a year out when he defends his crown in Sheffield later on this month.
Veteran hotshots
Two of the game’s most exciting potters ever, veterans Jimmy White and Tony Drago, yesterday edged closer to the final stages of the World Championship after victories in the second qualifying round.
White had a 10-7 victory over China’s Tian Pengfei and Drago was also a 10-7 winner against Andy Hicks, of England.
White, the six-time Crucible finalist, and Drago now need two more wins to make it to the last 32.
Today, White faces another Chinese player, Xiao Guodong, and ‘Tornado’ Drago plays England’s David Gilbert.
Drago started the day leading 5-4 in the best-of-19 round.
Hicks levelled after winning yes-terday’s opener but Drago claimed three successive frames to under-line his intention of making pro-gress in this championship before securing the frames required to book his place in the next round.
Elsewhere, Kurt Maflin, a semi-finalist in the recent PTC Grand Finals, earned a meeting with Steve Davis by beating Craig Steadman 10-6 with a top break of 101.