Talk:2008–09 snooker world ranking points

Steve Davis's points
Have World Snooker officially confirmed how many points Steve gets for Bahrain. He won in the last 48, gained a walkover in the last 32, and withdrew from his last 16 match. Presumably he officially reached the last 16, earning 1900 points?--MartinUK (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I have no idea if he will get 1400 or 1900 points. Also Ronnie's case is rather unclear. It might be best to leave them at the lower value until we know for sure. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 21:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The provisional rankings have been updated now on the official site and Steve Davis received 0 points. 89.168.15.121 (talk) 01:17, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * They now officially got 700 and 1900 points respectively credited, so I added those. Kabrada (talk) 19:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ranking change arrows
It seems that at the moment, the ranking change arrows are calculated using the seed of the player, not the ranking at the end of the last year. IMHO, this is a mistake. For most players it doesn't matter, since the ranking at the end of the season is used as seed for the next season, but for some players at lower half of the table, there is a significant difference, which make their season performance look much worse than it really is. Another reason for changing is to ensure additivity, i.e., if you go up five places one year and two places next year, the total change for the two years should be up seven places. This makes it easier if you want to study a players ranking fluctuations over a long term. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 11:39, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I know the ranking points draw from two years, but the rankings are updated on an annual basis. The point of the arrows are to show the player's movement up and down the rankings relative to his official position within the season.  Its meaning is intuitive. However, I do agree that the rank and not the seed should be used. Betty Logan (talk) 03:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, looking at the official rankings, are the end of year ranks the official ranks or are the players re-ranked after some get demoted from the tour? For instance Scott MacKenzie finished 71st in the 07/08 points, but according to the 08/09 ranks his rank is listed as 66th (presumably he finished 2nd on the one year list).  So is he officially ranked 71st and just seeded 66th, or is he officially re-ranked as 66th after the other tour players have been relegated?  IMO the official rank should be used because the intuitive reading of the arrows is that it shows the displacement of the provisional rank to their official rank.Betty Logan (talk) 03:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Scott MacKenzie's 71st place ist just a provisinonal ranking, and the 66th place is the offical ranking for this season. And the arrows should show the change to a official rankings (not to a provisional ranking). Armbrust (talk) 11:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your opinions, Betty and Armbrust, but I'm missing proper arguments besides being more intuitive. For me comparing official and provisial rankings is like comparing apples and oranges. It happens to work well on the top half of the table because for these players the two rankings are the same, but at the lower end the change arrows are currently not very useful. A player can have a rather good season and the arrow will still be red. To me the ranking points pages are (at least will be) a long series of pages and if you look it as such a change arrow which compares the last years result with this years result is much more intuitive. Also, note that these pages are for rankings points, for the official rankings we have the snooker world rankings page. The reason I ask now is that I would like to create the page for next season soon and, since there is no official rankings yet, the comparison must be made to the provisional rankings. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 08:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The aim of the ranking points are for the purpose of ranking players at the end of the season, not to measure ongoing performance. In fact they're not particularly suitable for judging ongoing performance because a season's worth of points are scrapped each May, so the measure can one day make it look like the player is doing well (if he is rising in the rankings) and then the next it looks like he's doing badly becasue he's suddenly dropped 20 places.  So all the ranking points really do is show the accumulation of points across a couple of seasons and how that will impact on his official ranking come the end of the season.  That is the primary interest of the provisional rankings, and all the arrows show is how the provisional ranking differs to the official ranking.  I think the onus is on you to make a compelling argument for doing it differently. I also suggest you bring it up on the Snooker Project page and put a link to this discussion, and see what a few other people think.  There may be a compromise somewhere along the line, for instance including another column with the official rank of the player so at least the chart will show a comparison between official and provisional rank throughout the season and use the arrows for showing movement in the provisonal rankings if your idea gains support. I don't really edit on these articles so ultimately I will stand by what the regular editors want to do, but we ecrtainly need a wider discussion.Betty Logan (talk) 03:18, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair point. When creating this page it was intended as to focus on ranking points instead of official rankings, for which we already had a page. That it can be (and are) used as provisional rankings is just a nice side effect. But obviously you have a different viewpoint, and since the discrepancy is rather small and there seems to be no support for my suggestion, I will accept your version. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 11:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)