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 |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 26, 2026, 7:01 p.m. | 2025 | Zhang Anda | 2 | 4 | John Higgins |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 26, 2026, 8:45 p.m. | 2025 | Stuart Bingham | 4 | 2 | Zhao Xintong |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 26, 2026, 9:27 p.m. | 2025 | Zhou Yuelong | 4 | 1 | Sam Craigie |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 27, 2026, 11:56 a.m. | 2025 | Barry Hawkins | 5 | 3 | Neil Robertson |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 27, 2026, 3:59 p.m. | 2025 | Jack Lisowski | 5 | 2 | Stuart Bingham |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 27, 2026, 7:04 p.m. | 2025 | Zhou Yuelong | 0 | 5 | John Higgins |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 27, 2026, 7:04 p.m. | 2025 | Jiang Jun | 4 | 5 | Wu Yize |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 28, 2026, 1:15 p.m. | 2025 | Wu Yize | 4 | 6 | Barry Hawkins |
| Welsh Open | Feb. 28, 2026, 6:45 p.m. | 2025 | John Higgins | 5 | 6 | Jack Lisowski |
| Welsh Open | March 1, 2026, 1:11 p.m. | 2025 | Barry Hawkins | 9 | 5 | Jack Lisowski |
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 | 1653.01 |
| 2 | Zhao Xintong | 1613.98 |
| 3 | Mark Selby | 1596.48 |
| 4 | Kyren Wilson | 1575.24 |
| 5 | John Higgins | 1563.99 |
| 6 | Wu Yize | 1544.13 |
| 7 | Mark Williams | 1541.47 |
| 8 | Shaun Murphy | 1538.22 |
| 9 | Mark Allen | 1533.04 |
| 10 | Barry Hawkins | 1530.47 |
| 11 | Neil Robertson | 1517.49 |
| 12 | Xiao Guodong | 1507.32 |
| 13 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1501.14 |
| 14 | Zhou Yuelong | 1496.76 |
| 15 | Ding Junhui | 1494.37 |
| 16 | Elliot Slessor | 1492.90 |
| 17 | Ali Carter | 1492.81 |
| 18 | Luca Brecel | 1471.92 |
| 19 | Jack Lisowski | 1471.00 |
| 20 | Si Jiahui | 1459.83 |
| 21 | Zhang Anda | 1457.27 |
| 22 | Jak Jones | 1452.61 |
| 23 | Stuart Bingham | 1450.44 |
| 24 | Stephen Maguire | 1447.44 |
| 25 | Yuan Sijun | 1437.87 |
| 26 | Matthew Selt | 1435.03 |
| 27 | Joe O'Connor | 1434.48 |
| 28 | Anthony McGill | 1432.44 |
| 29 | Chris Wakelin | 1430.40 |
| 30 | Chang Bingyu | 1428.24 |
| 31 | Pang Junxu | 1422.14 |
| 32 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 33 | Tom Ford | 1416.33 |
| 34 | Hossein Vafaei | 1413.50 |
| 35 | David Gilbert | 1413.20 |
| 36 | Sam Craigie | 1413.01 |
| 37 | Ricky Walden | 1412.27 |
| 38 | Stan Moody | 1409.59 |
| 39 | Gary Wilson | 1409.51 |
| 40 | Noppon Saengkham | 1400.43 |
| 41 | Jackson Page | 1397.06 |
| 42 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1393.30 |
| 43 | Ryan Day | 1391.52 |
| 44 | Zak Surety | 1388.17 |
| 45 | Lei Peifan | 1386.93 |
| 46 | Xu Si | 1384.80 |
| 47 | Jimmy Robertson | 1381.17 |
| 48 | Scott Donaldson | 1380.46 |
| 49 | Martin O'Donnell | 1379.50 |
| 50 | Robbie Williams | 1379.26 |
| 51 | Aaron Hill | 1377.74 |
| 52 | Daniel Wells | 1376.13 |
| 53 | Lyu Haotian | 1373.40 |
| 54 | Jiang Jun | 1373.36 |
| 55 | Ben Woollaston | 1371.48 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Ken Doherty | 1363.58 |
| 58 | Matthew Stevens | 1362.49 |
| 59 | Marco Fu | 1359.52 |
| 60 | Fan Zhengyi | 1359.04 |
| 61 | Louis Heathcote | 1349.18 |
| 62 | He Guoqiang | 1347.78 |
| 63 | Julien Leclercq | 1346.87 |
| 64 | Oliver Lines | 1344.54 |
| 65 | Michael Holt | 1341.29 |
| 66 | Liam Highfield | 1339.36 |
| 67 | Long Zehuang | 1335.27 |
| 68 | David Lilley | 1330.82 |
| 69 | Ben Mertens | 1325.86 |
| 70 | Liu Hongyu | 1324.87 |
| 71 | Sunny Akani | 1324.39 |
| 72 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1322.47 |
| 73 | David Grace | 1321.92 |
| 74 | Dylan Emery | 1316.28 |
| 75 | Robert Milkins | 1315.92 |
| 76 | Jamie Jones | 1312.09 |
| 77 | Jimmy White | 1310.45 |
| 78 | Liam Davies | 1308.02 |
| 79 | Mark Davis | 1304.52 |
| 80 | Artemijs Zizins | 1301.78 |
| 81 | Liam Pullen | 1300.06 |
| 82 | Iulian Boiko | 1298.97 |
| 83 | Antoni Kowalski | 1297.77 |
| 84 | Ian Burns | 1292.76 |
| 85 | Steven Hallworth | 1291.66 |
| 86 | Gao Yang | 1289.53 |
| 87 | Jordan Brown | 1286.08 |
| 88 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1277.88 |
| 89 | Allan Taylor | 1276.24 |
| 90 | Ross Muir | 1271.23 |
| 91 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1268.78 |
| 92 | Lan Yuhao | 1268.34 |
| 93 | Mitchell Mann | 1263.17 |
| 94 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1262.30 |
| 95 | Duane Jones | 1258.92 |
| 96 | Sanderson Lam | 1257.12 |
| 97 | Yao Pengcheng | 1252.80 |
| 98 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 99 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1249.21 |
| 100 | Wang Yuchen | 1245.82 |
| 101 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1245.07 |
| 102 | Gong Chenzhi | 1240.91 |
| 103 | Liu Wenwei | 1240.00 |
| 104 | Zhao Hanyang | 1226.10 |
| 105 | Liam Graham | 1221.35 |
| 106 | Huang Jiahao | 1219.84 |
| 107 | Mohammed Shehab | 1219.13 |
| 108 | Xu Yichen | 1217.31 |
| 109 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1216.51 |
| 110 | Florian Nüßle | 1214.01 |
| 111 | Haris Tahir | 1213.17 |
| 112 | Robbie McGuigan | 1208.69 |
| 113 | Farakh Ajaib | 1208.17 |
| 114 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1201.11 |
| 115 | Connor Benzey | 1195.96 |
| 116 | Sahil Nayyar | 1192.61 |
| 117 | Bai Yulu | 1188.43 |
| 118 | Leone Crowley | 1182.13 |
| 119 | Oliver Brown | 1181.12 |
| 120 | Haydon Pinhey | 1167.17 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1154.14 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1138.83 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1137.57 |
| 124 | Ng On Yee | 1134.36 |
| 125 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1124.32 |
| 126 | Hatem Yassin | 1120.08 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1077.15 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1031.89 |
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.