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 |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 19, 2025, 11:57 a.m. | 2025 | Chang Bingyu | 5 | 3 | Mark Selby |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 19, 2025, 3:38 p.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 5 | 3 | Zhou Yuelong |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 19, 2025, 7:03 p.m. | 2025 | Jiang Jun | 2 | 5 | Matthew Selt |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 19, 2025, 7:04 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Allen | 5 | 2 | Joe O'Connor |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 20, 2025, 12:54 p.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 6 | 4 | Matthew Selt |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 20, 2025, 7:08 p.m. | 2025 | Chang Bingyu | 6 | 1 | Mark Allen |
| Scottish Open | Dec. 21, 2025, 1:06 p.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 9 | 2 | Chang Bingyu |
| Championship League - Group 1 | Jan. 2, 2026, 11:01 a.m. | 2025 | Joe O'Connor | 3 | 1 | Hossein Vafaei |
| Championship League - Group 1 | Jan. 2, 2026, 11:01 a.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 0 | 3 | Elliot Slessor |
| Championship League - Group 1 | Jan. 2, 2026, 12:06 p.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 1 | 3 | Tom Ford |
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 | 1641.50 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1612.31 |
| 3 | Mark Williams | 1565.79 |
| 4 | Kyren Wilson | 1565.41 |
| 5 | Neil Robertson | 1561.40 |
| 6 | Shaun Murphy | 1539.60 |
| 7 | Mark Allen | 1536.99 |
| 8 | John Higgins | 1532.04 |
| 9 | Zhao Xintong | 1529.90 |
| 10 | Xiao Guodong | 1518.73 |
| 11 | Ding Junhui | 1517.91 |
| 12 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1506.25 |
| 13 | Wu Yize | 1504.93 |
| 14 | Barry Hawkins | 1503.76 |
| 15 | Joe O'Connor | 1482.96 |
| 16 | Luca Brecel | 1480.83 |
| 17 | Elliot Slessor | 1479.88 |
| 18 | Zhou Yuelong | 1469.58 |
| 19 | Ali Carter | 1468.25 |
| 20 | Si Jiahui | 1464.30 |
| 21 | Stephen Maguire | 1464.22 |
| 22 | Jack Lisowski | 1463.19 |
| 23 | Yuan Sijun | 1453.45 |
| 24 | Jak Jones | 1448.56 |
| 25 | Zhang Anda | 1441.89 |
| 26 | Pang Junxu | 1441.69 |
| 27 | Chris Wakelin | 1438.56 |
| 28 | Hossein Vafaei | 1437.75 |
| 29 | Gary Wilson | 1434.84 |
| 30 | Stuart Bingham | 1431.63 |
| 31 | Matthew Selt | 1427.30 |
| 32 | Anthony McGill | 1422.61 |
| 33 | David Gilbert | 1421.63 |
| 34 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 35 | Ricky Walden | 1415.29 |
| 36 | Noppon Saengkham | 1409.88 |
| 37 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1409.63 |
| 38 | Chang Bingyu | 1406.75 |
| 39 | Tom Ford | 1402.98 |
| 40 | Ben Woollaston | 1401.51 |
| 41 | Stan Moody | 1401.40 |
| 42 | Ryan Day | 1398.89 |
| 43 | Jackson Page | 1398.22 |
| 44 | Lei Peifan | 1395.86 |
| 45 | Scott Donaldson | 1394.55 |
| 46 | Zak Surety | 1391.46 |
| 47 | Aaron Hill | 1386.91 |
| 48 | Sam Craigie | 1384.59 |
| 49 | Daniel Wells | 1383.16 |
| 50 | Lyu Haotian | 1382.12 |
| 51 | Ken Doherty | 1375.46 |
| 52 | Martin O'Donnell | 1374.88 |
| 53 | Oliver Lines | 1374.86 |
| 54 | Matthew Stevens | 1370.62 |
| 55 | Fan Zhengyi | 1366.70 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Xu Si | 1360.85 |
| 58 | He Guoqiang | 1360.32 |
| 59 | Jimmy Robertson | 1355.60 |
| 60 | Robbie Williams | 1355.06 |
| 61 | Louis Heathcote | 1350.96 |
| 62 | Marco Fu | 1344.32 |
| 63 | Michael Holt | 1338.84 |
| 64 | David Lilley | 1334.38 |
| 65 | Sunny Akani | 1333.89 |
| 66 | Jiang Jun | 1332.71 |
| 67 | Robert Milkins | 1328.28 |
| 68 | Jamie Jones | 1327.75 |
| 69 | Long Zehuang | 1326.66 |
| 70 | Liam Highfield | 1326.45 |
| 71 | Liu Hongyu | 1326.42 |
| 72 | Jimmy White | 1323.53 |
| 73 | Ben Mertens | 1321.98 |
| 74 | Mark Davis | 1320.48 |
| 75 | Liam Davies | 1312.55 |
| 76 | Dylan Emery | 1305.22 |
| 77 | Julien Leclercq | 1305.09 |
| 78 | Steven Hallworth | 1297.81 |
| 79 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1297.18 |
| 80 | Jordan Brown | 1296.88 |
| 81 | Iulian Boiko | 1293.27 |
| 82 | Ian Burns | 1290.23 |
| 83 | Artemijs Zizins | 1282.85 |
| 84 | David Grace | 1280.53 |
| 85 | Antoni Kowalski | 1278.73 |
| 86 | Liam Pullen | 1278.67 |
| 87 | Ross Muir | 1276.68 |
| 88 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1271.17 |
| 89 | Duane Jones | 1270.81 |
| 90 | Lan Yuhao | 1270.80 |
| 91 | Allan Taylor | 1264.45 |
| 92 | Sanderson Lam | 1262.53 |
| 93 | Gao Yang | 1261.64 |
| 94 | Mitchell Mann | 1259.99 |
| 95 | Wang Yuchen | 1257.86 |
| 96 | Yao Pengcheng | 1257.45 |
| 97 | Gong Chenzhi | 1252.56 |
| 98 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 99 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1251.84 |
| 100 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1245.45 |
| 101 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1240.99 |
| 102 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1236.25 |
| 103 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1233.04 |
| 104 | Liam Graham | 1230.32 |
| 105 | Haris Tahir | 1221.26 |
| 106 | Huang Jiahao | 1219.74 |
| 107 | Liu Wenwei | 1218.52 |
| 108 | Zhao Hanyang | 1215.66 |
| 109 | Xu Yichen | 1215.60 |
| 110 | Mohammed Shehab | 1214.27 |
| 111 | Florian Nüßle | 1213.68 |
| 112 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1213.33 |
| 113 | Connor Benzey | 1209.30 |
| 114 | Robbie McGuigan | 1205.54 |
| 115 | Bai Yulu | 1204.15 |
| 116 | Farakh Ajaib | 1202.31 |
| 117 | Oliver Brown | 1197.91 |
| 118 | Sahil Nayyar | 1197.84 |
| 119 | Leone Crowley | 1197.39 |
| 120 | Haydon Pinhey | 1180.61 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1167.65 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1150.41 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1148.99 |
| 124 | Ng On Yee | 1145.95 |
| 125 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1135.64 |
| 126 | Hatem Yassin | 1131.67 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1084.13 |
| 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.