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 |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 9:51 a.m. | 2025 | Stan Moody | 5 | 4 | Jiang Jun |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 9:51 a.m. | 2025 | Ding Junhui | 2 | 5 | Marco Fu |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 9:51 a.m. | 2025 | Jack Lisowski | 5 | 2 | Gong Chenzhi |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:32 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 5 | 4 | Haydon Pinhey |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:32 p.m. | 2025 | Elliot Slessor | 5 | 2 | Bai Yulu |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:32 p.m. | 2025 | Si Jiahui | 3 | 5 | Zhao Hanyang |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:32 p.m. | 2025 | David Gilbert | 5 | 3 | Connor Benzey |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:32 p.m. | 2025 | Matthew Selt | 5 | 4 | Liam Davies |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:33 p.m. | 2025 | Tom Ford | 4 | 5 | Allan Taylor |
| World Open Qualifiers | Feb. 12, 2026, 2:33 p.m. | 2025 | Wu Yize | 5 | 2 | Liam Pullen |
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 | 1653.40 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1613.77 |
| 3 | Zhao Xintong | 1593.74 |
| 4 | Kyren Wilson | 1581.97 |
| 5 | Shaun Murphy | 1549.17 |
| 6 | Wu Yize | 1543.84 |
| 7 | John Higgins | 1542.06 |
| 8 | Mark Williams | 1540.86 |
| 9 | Mark Allen | 1534.55 |
| 10 | Xiao Guodong | 1521.59 |
| 11 | Neil Robertson | 1517.87 |
| 12 | Elliot Slessor | 1508.21 |
| 13 | Ali Carter | 1501.83 |
| 14 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1501.14 |
| 15 | Barry Hawkins | 1495.22 |
| 16 | Ding Junhui | 1494.37 |
| 17 | Zhou Yuelong | 1488.11 |
| 18 | Luca Brecel | 1481.44 |
| 19 | Si Jiahui | 1469.45 |
| 20 | Zhang Anda | 1460.12 |
| 21 | Stephen Maguire | 1449.77 |
| 22 | Jak Jones | 1446.21 |
| 23 | Jack Lisowski | 1443.27 |
| 24 | Yuan Sijun | 1441.59 |
| 25 | Chris Wakelin | 1436.95 |
| 26 | Stuart Bingham | 1435.16 |
| 27 | Matthew Selt | 1435.03 |
| 28 | Joe O'Connor | 1433.43 |
| 29 | Anthony McGill | 1430.67 |
| 30 | Chang Bingyu | 1426.61 |
| 31 | Tom Ford | 1424.89 |
| 32 | Pang Junxu | 1423.26 |
| 33 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 34 | Ricky Walden | 1419.11 |
| 35 | David Gilbert | 1416.75 |
| 36 | Hossein Vafaei | 1413.74 |
| 37 | Gary Wilson | 1412.93 |
| 38 | Stan Moody | 1405.95 |
| 39 | Ryan Day | 1401.91 |
| 40 | Sam Craigie | 1401.60 |
| 41 | Noppon Saengkham | 1400.43 |
| 42 | Lei Peifan | 1396.16 |
| 43 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1393.30 |
| 44 | Jimmy Robertson | 1388.29 |
| 45 | Zak Surety | 1388.17 |
| 46 | Jackson Page | 1385.56 |
| 47 | Xu Si | 1384.80 |
| 48 | Aaron Hill | 1384.19 |
| 49 | Scott Donaldson | 1380.46 |
| 50 | Daniel Wells | 1376.13 |
| 51 | Martin O'Donnell | 1375.17 |
| 52 | Lyu Haotian | 1373.40 |
| 53 | Ben Woollaston | 1371.48 |
| 54 | Robbie Williams | 1368.35 |
| 55 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 56 | Ken Doherty | 1363.58 |
| 57 | Matthew Stevens | 1362.49 |
| 58 | Fan Zhengyi | 1361.83 |
| 59 | Marco Fu | 1359.52 |
| 60 | Louis Heathcote | 1354.89 |
| 61 | Julien Leclercq | 1352.49 |
| 62 | Jiang Jun | 1347.96 |
| 63 | He Guoqiang | 1347.78 |
| 64 | Michael Holt | 1344.94 |
| 65 | Liam Highfield | 1344.73 |
| 66 | Oliver Lines | 1344.54 |
| 67 | Long Zehuang | 1339.32 |
| 68 | David Lilley | 1335.21 |
| 69 | Ben Mertens | 1329.36 |
| 70 | Liu Hongyu | 1327.69 |
| 71 | Sunny Akani | 1324.39 |
| 72 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1322.47 |
| 73 | Robert Milkins | 1315.92 |
| 74 | Dylan Emery | 1314.69 |
| 75 | Jamie Jones | 1312.09 |
| 76 | Jimmy White | 1310.45 |
| 77 | Liam Davies | 1308.02 |
| 78 | Artemijs Zizins | 1307.05 |
| 79 | David Grace | 1305.61 |
| 80 | Mark Davis | 1304.52 |
| 81 | Antoni Kowalski | 1302.77 |
| 82 | Iulian Boiko | 1298.97 |
| 83 | Gao Yang | 1294.14 |
| 84 | Liam Pullen | 1293.94 |
| 85 | Ian Burns | 1292.76 |
| 86 | Steven Hallworth | 1291.66 |
| 87 | Jordan Brown | 1286.08 |
| 88 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1281.45 |
| 89 | Allan Taylor | 1276.24 |
| 90 | Ross Muir | 1271.23 |
| 91 | Lan Yuhao | 1268.34 |
| 92 | Mitchell Mann | 1266.98 |
| 93 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1262.30 |
| 94 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1260.78 |
| 95 | Duane Jones | 1258.92 |
| 96 | Sanderson Lam | 1257.12 |
| 97 | Yao Pengcheng | 1252.80 |
| 98 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 99 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1251.97 |
| 100 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1249.27 |
| 101 | Wang Yuchen | 1245.82 |
| 102 | Liu Wenwei | 1242.09 |
| 103 | Gong Chenzhi | 1240.91 |
| 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 | 1212.22 |
| 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.