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 |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 26, 2025, 7:04 p.m. | 2025 | Joe O'Connor | 5 | 6 | Ben Woollaston |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 26, 2025, 7:04 p.m. | 2025 | Elliot Slessor | 6 | 4 | Zak Surety |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 1:05 p.m. | 2025 | Long Zehuang | 6 | 5 | Louis Heathcote |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 1:05 p.m. | 2025 | Ryan Day | 6 | 5 | Hossein Vafaei |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 1:05 p.m. | 2025 | Pang Junxu | 6 | 2 | Noppon Saengkham |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 1:05 p.m. | 2025 | Artemijs Zizins | 5 | 6 | David Lilley |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 7:07 p.m. | 2025 | He Guoqiang | 4 | 6 | Julien Leclercq |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 7:07 p.m. | 2025 | Jimmy Robertson | 5 | 6 | Lei Peifan |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 7:07 p.m. | 2025 | Tom Ford | 3 | 6 | Xu Si |
| UK Championship Qualifiers | Nov. 27, 2025, 7:07 p.m. | 2025 | Zhang Anda | 6 | 4 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh |
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 | 1629.85 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1585.50 |
| 3 | Kyren Wilson | 1579.32 |
| 4 | Mark Williams | 1571.73 |
| 5 | Zhao Xintong | 1558.33 |
| 6 | Mark Allen | 1554.42 |
| 7 | Neil Robertson | 1552.66 |
| 8 | Shaun Murphy | 1543.17 |
| 9 | John Higgins | 1542.10 |
| 10 | Xiao Guodong | 1533.49 |
| 11 | Wu Yize | 1517.45 |
| 12 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1515.04 |
| 13 | Ding Junhui | 1513.33 |
| 14 | Barry Hawkins | 1510.10 |
| 15 | Stephen Maguire | 1491.42 |
| 16 | Si Jiahui | 1479.43 |
| 17 | Ali Carter | 1477.85 |
| 18 | Luca Brecel | 1477.26 |
| 19 | Elliot Slessor | 1475.88 |
| 20 | Jack Lisowski | 1474.98 |
| 21 | Joe O'Connor | 1472.72 |
| 22 | Gary Wilson | 1459.40 |
| 23 | Zhou Yuelong | 1454.60 |
| 24 | Hossein Vafaei | 1453.47 |
| 25 | Jak Jones | 1448.56 |
| 26 | Yuan Sijun | 1444.57 |
| 27 | Anthony McGill | 1433.43 |
| 28 | Zhang Anda | 1433.11 |
| 29 | Pang Junxu | 1424.49 |
| 30 | Ben Woollaston | 1422.98 |
| 31 | David Gilbert | 1422.82 |
| 32 | Ricky Walden | 1421.25 |
| 33 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 34 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1417.35 |
| 35 | Ryan Day | 1414.96 |
| 36 | Matthew Selt | 1414.37 |
| 37 | Chris Wakelin | 1408.58 |
| 38 | Stan Moody | 1404.63 |
| 39 | Stuart Bingham | 1401.60 |
| 40 | Lei Peifan | 1401.60 |
| 41 | Aaron Hill | 1395.15 |
| 42 | Daniel Wells | 1394.03 |
| 43 | Sam Craigie | 1390.69 |
| 44 | Scott Donaldson | 1388.76 |
| 45 | Jackson Page | 1386.48 |
| 46 | Lyu Haotian | 1386.45 |
| 47 | Tom Ford | 1386.28 |
| 48 | Matthew Stevens | 1383.48 |
| 49 | Zak Surety | 1383.27 |
| 50 | Martin O'Donnell | 1382.29 |
| 51 | Oliver Lines | 1381.30 |
| 52 | Ken Doherty | 1381.05 |
| 53 | He Guoqiang | 1376.28 |
| 54 | Noppon Saengkham | 1372.99 |
| 55 | Xu Si | 1372.87 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Chang Bingyu | 1361.43 |
| 58 | Robbie Williams | 1360.87 |
| 59 | Fan Zhengyi | 1356.36 |
| 60 | Louis Heathcote | 1355.91 |
| 61 | Jimmy Robertson | 1353.63 |
| 62 | David Lilley | 1348.16 |
| 63 | Michael Holt | 1346.40 |
| 64 | Marco Fu | 1344.32 |
| 65 | Jamie Jones | 1337.34 |
| 66 | Robert Milkins | 1335.88 |
| 67 | Long Zehuang | 1334.42 |
| 68 | Jimmy White | 1334.04 |
| 69 | Sunny Akani | 1333.89 |
| 70 | Liu Hongyu | 1331.11 |
| 71 | Mark Davis | 1330.25 |
| 72 | Jiang Jun | 1317.67 |
| 73 | Dylan Emery | 1314.08 |
| 74 | Liam Highfield | 1312.31 |
| 75 | Liam Davies | 1311.53 |
| 76 | Steven Hallworth | 1310.32 |
| 77 | Ben Mertens | 1307.04 |
| 78 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1304.02 |
| 79 | Ian Burns | 1300.86 |
| 80 | Jordan Brown | 1296.52 |
| 81 | Julien Leclercq | 1295.56 |
| 82 | Antoni Kowalski | 1291.02 |
| 83 | Liam Pullen | 1289.77 |
| 84 | Artemijs Zizins | 1287.55 |
| 85 | David Grace | 1284.09 |
| 86 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1271.17 |
| 87 | Yao Pengcheng | 1265.45 |
| 88 | Duane Jones | 1263.97 |
| 89 | Gao Yang | 1262.73 |
| 90 | Allan Taylor | 1262.27 |
| 91 | Lan Yuhao | 1260.93 |
| 92 | Ross Muir | 1258.59 |
| 93 | Wang Yuchen | 1256.59 |
| 94 | Gong Chenzhi | 1256.36 |
| 95 | Iulian Boiko | 1253.60 |
| 96 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 97 | Sanderson Lam | 1251.47 |
| 98 | Mitchell Mann | 1250.50 |
| 99 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1244.09 |
| 100 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1242.67 |
| 101 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1242.49 |
| 102 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1237.69 |
| 103 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1237.61 |
| 104 | Liam Graham | 1228.27 |
| 105 | Huang Jiahao | 1227.45 |
| 106 | Haris Tahir | 1224.43 |
| 107 | Liu Wenwei | 1222.57 |
| 108 | Zhao Hanyang | 1222.21 |
| 109 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1217.14 |
| 110 | Mohammed Shehab | 1214.27 |
| 111 | Xu Yichen | 1210.82 |
| 112 | Florian Nüßle | 1208.50 |
| 113 | Connor Benzey | 1207.05 |
| 114 | Leone Crowley | 1204.06 |
| 115 | Bai Yulu | 1203.48 |
| 116 | Sahil Nayyar | 1194.85 |
| 117 | Farakh Ajaib | 1192.61 |
| 118 | Robbie McGuigan | 1189.68 |
| 119 | Haydon Pinhey | 1186.50 |
| 120 | Oliver Brown | 1186.20 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1172.58 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1155.90 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1155.38 |
| 124 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1138.59 |
| 125 | Hatem Yassin | 1136.74 |
| 126 | Ng On Yee | 1122.56 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1089.03 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1040.78 |
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.