Here, I am going to make an alternative world ranking system for snooker. Currently, the world snooker rankings are based on a two-year rolling sum of prize money won by players in ranking tournaments. However, this may be a bit distorted for example because:
To create this ranking system I am going to use match, event and player data sourced from the excellent snooker.org via their API. I have obtained historical data back to the beginning of the 2013 season and have implemented a script to add the latest matches once per day from the Snooker.org API. As an example of the match data the table below has the last ten matches included in the ranking system.
| Event | Datetime | Season | Player1 Name | Player1 Score | Player2 Score | Player2 Name |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 1:25 p.m. | 2025 | Xiao Guodong | 3 | 2 | Jack Lisowski |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 1:54 p.m. | 2025 | Zhao Xintong | 3 | 1 | Oliver Lines |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 4:30 p.m. | 2025 | Zhang Anda | 3 | 1 | Oliver Lines |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 4:30 p.m. | 2025 | Wu Yize | 2 | 3 | Jak Jones |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 5:45 p.m. | 2025 | Jak Jones | 0 | 3 | Zhao Xintong |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 5:45 p.m. | 2025 | Wu Yize | 3 | 0 | Zhang Anda |
| Championship League - Group 6 | Jan. 22, 2026, 6:38 p.m. | 2025 | Wu Yize | 3 | 1 | Zhao Xintong |
| Championship League - Group 7 | Jan. 23, 2026, 11:06 a.m. | 2025 | Zhang Anda | 1 | 3 | Lei Peifan |
| Championship League - Group 7 | Jan. 23, 2026, 11:06 a.m. | 2025 | Jack Lisowski | 3 | 1 | Ryan Day |
| Championship League - Group 7 | Jan. 23, 2026, 11:57 a.m. | 2025 | Jak Jones | 3 | 0 | Ryan Day |
Using the full database of snooker matches I can calculate an alternative player rating system. This rating system works by initialising all players ratings at a chosen level before their first match and then adjusting the ratings after each match based on each of the players ratings before the match and the outcome of the match. The current ratings are given in the table below:
| Ranking | Player | Rating |
| 1 | Judd Trump | 1642.10 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1615.85 |
| 3 | Kyren Wilson | 1585.49 |
| 4 | Zhao Xintong | 1568.65 |
| 5 | Mark Williams | 1557.67 |
| 6 | John Higgins | 1548.95 |
| 7 | Wu Yize | 1545.69 |
| 8 | Mark Allen | 1539.74 |
| 9 | Shaun Murphy | 1531.36 |
| 10 | Neil Robertson | 1520.15 |
| 11 | Ding Junhui | 1512.97 |
| 12 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1506.25 |
| 13 | Barry Hawkins | 1496.86 |
| 14 | Elliot Slessor | 1495.33 |
| 15 | Xiao Guodong | 1488.57 |
| 16 | Luca Brecel | 1478.69 |
| 17 | Zhou Yuelong | 1475.36 |
| 18 | Ali Carter | 1474.72 |
| 19 | Jak Jones | 1473.34 |
| 20 | Si Jiahui | 1472.63 |
| 21 | Jack Lisowski | 1460.45 |
| 22 | Stephen Maguire | 1453.07 |
| 23 | Joe O'Connor | 1451.47 |
| 24 | Yuan Sijun | 1447.23 |
| 25 | Anthony McGill | 1437.28 |
| 26 | Zhang Anda | 1437.18 |
| 27 | Matthew Selt | 1435.78 |
| 28 | Chris Wakelin | 1434.95 |
| 29 | Pang Junxu | 1433.54 |
| 30 | Stuart Bingham | 1431.76 |
| 31 | Tom Ford | 1425.15 |
| 32 | Gary Wilson | 1423.62 |
| 33 | Chang Bingyu | 1421.28 |
| 34 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 35 | David Gilbert | 1419.61 |
| 36 | Ricky Walden | 1419.11 |
| 37 | Noppon Saengkham | 1410.60 |
| 38 | Hossein Vafaei | 1409.03 |
| 39 | Ryan Day | 1400.73 |
| 40 | Stan Moody | 1399.41 |
| 41 | Lei Peifan | 1396.48 |
| 42 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1396.01 |
| 43 | Sam Craigie | 1393.28 |
| 44 | Scott Donaldson | 1390.19 |
| 45 | Zak Surety | 1388.48 |
| 46 | Jackson Page | 1385.56 |
| 47 | Aaron Hill | 1383.21 |
| 48 | Ben Woollaston | 1381.83 |
| 49 | Fan Zhengyi | 1375.33 |
| 50 | Martin O'Donnell | 1372.01 |
| 51 | Ken Doherty | 1371.83 |
| 52 | Daniel Wells | 1371.77 |
| 53 | Jimmy Robertson | 1369.87 |
| 54 | Robbie Williams | 1368.19 |
| 55 | Lyu Haotian | 1367.33 |
| 56 | Xu Si | 1366.09 |
| 57 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 58 | Oliver Lines | 1359.04 |
| 59 | Louis Heathcote | 1358.97 |
| 60 | Matthew Stevens | 1358.90 |
| 61 | Jiang Jun | 1357.93 |
| 62 | Marco Fu | 1348.86 |
| 63 | Julien Leclercq | 1348.24 |
| 64 | Liam Highfield | 1344.73 |
| 65 | He Guoqiang | 1342.12 |
| 66 | Liu Hongyu | 1338.61 |
| 67 | Long Zehuang | 1338.20 |
| 68 | Michael Holt | 1336.68 |
| 69 | David Lilley | 1332.36 |
| 70 | Ben Mertens | 1329.36 |
| 71 | Robert Milkins | 1326.90 |
| 72 | Sunny Akani | 1324.39 |
| 73 | Jamie Jones | 1323.25 |
| 74 | Dylan Emery | 1318.88 |
| 75 | Mark Davis | 1316.54 |
| 76 | Jimmy White | 1314.32 |
| 77 | Liam Davies | 1313.09 |
| 78 | Gao Yang | 1303.22 |
| 79 | Artemijs Zizins | 1299.10 |
| 80 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1298.02 |
| 81 | Liam Pullen | 1296.90 |
| 82 | Jordan Brown | 1295.83 |
| 83 | David Grace | 1294.92 |
| 84 | Antoni Kowalski | 1294.37 |
| 85 | Iulian Boiko | 1290.76 |
| 86 | Ian Burns | 1284.66 |
| 87 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1283.76 |
| 88 | Steven Hallworth | 1281.50 |
| 89 | Lan Yuhao | 1273.04 |
| 90 | Ross Muir | 1271.23 |
| 91 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1267.23 |
| 92 | Mitchell Mann | 1266.98 |
| 93 | Allan Taylor | 1265.33 |
| 94 | Sanderson Lam | 1263.30 |
| 95 | Duane Jones | 1262.07 |
| 96 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1256.70 |
| 97 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1254.93 |
| 98 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1253.25 |
| 99 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 100 | Wang Yuchen | 1250.97 |
| 101 | Gong Chenzhi | 1244.59 |
| 102 | Yao Pengcheng | 1242.44 |
| 103 | Liu Wenwei | 1230.47 |
| 104 | Liam Graham | 1226.61 |
| 105 | Huang Jiahao | 1224.12 |
| 106 | Mohammed Shehab | 1223.29 |
| 107 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1219.26 |
| 108 | Haris Tahir | 1217.39 |
| 109 | Robbie McGuigan | 1216.58 |
| 110 | Zhao Hanyang | 1213.74 |
| 111 | Farakh Ajaib | 1211.81 |
| 112 | Xu Yichen | 1206.14 |
| 113 | Florian Nüßle | 1203.42 |
| 114 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1202.92 |
| 115 | Connor Benzey | 1199.34 |
| 116 | Sahil Nayyar | 1195.52 |
| 117 | Bai Yulu | 1190.53 |
| 118 | Oliver Brown | 1188.46 |
| 119 | Leone Crowley | 1185.11 |
| 120 | Haydon Pinhey | 1168.25 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1157.72 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1141.98 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1137.57 |
| 124 | Ng On Yee | 1136.67 |
| 125 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1125.59 |
| 126 | Hatem Yassin | 1122.32 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1079.99 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1033.24 |
At the moment the rating system is quite simple and not optimised but I intend to do some work to calibrate the rating system to maximise some chosen evaluation metric when time allows.