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 |
| International Championship | Nov. 9, 2025, 6 a.m. | 2025 | John Higgins | 6 | 10 | Wu Yize |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 10, 2025, 12:59 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 4 | 1 | Bai Yulu |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 10, 2025, 2:43 p.m. | 2025 | Shaun Murphy | 1 | 4 | Lei Peifan |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 10, 2025, 6:47 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 6 | 2 | Lei Peifan |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 11, 2025, 12:56 p.m. | 2025 | Kyren Wilson | 4 | 3 | Jack Lisowski |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 11, 2025, 2:53 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Allen | 0 | 4 | Zhao Xintong |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 11, 2025, 7 p.m. | 2025 | Kyren Wilson | 5 | 6 | Zhao Xintong |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 12, 2025, 12:56 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Williams | 4 | 0 | Alfie Burden |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 12, 2025, 2:34 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 4 | 0 | Stephen Maguire |
| Champion of Champions | Nov. 12, 2025, 6:53 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Williams | 5 | 6 | Mark Selby |
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 | 1630.88 |
| 2 | Kyren Wilson | 1587.75 |
| 3 | Mark Williams | 1578.05 |
| 4 | Mark Selby | 1569.50 |
| 5 | Mark Allen | 1554.74 |
| 6 | Zhao Xintong | 1544.28 |
| 7 | John Higgins | 1542.64 |
| 8 | Shaun Murphy | 1541.91 |
| 9 | Xiao Guodong | 1540.96 |
| 10 | Neil Robertson | 1539.22 |
| 11 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1522.07 |
| 12 | Ding Junhui | 1517.99 |
| 13 | Wu Yize | 1517.45 |
| 14 | Barry Hawkins | 1510.10 |
| 15 | Ali Carter | 1489.35 |
| 16 | Luca Brecel | 1488.58 |
| 17 | Jack Lisowski | 1485.19 |
| 18 | Stephen Maguire | 1482.46 |
| 19 | Si Jiahui | 1479.43 |
| 20 | Joe O'Connor | 1477.44 |
| 21 | Elliot Slessor | 1466.82 |
| 22 | Jak Jones | 1459.71 |
| 23 | Gary Wilson | 1459.40 |
| 24 | Hossein Vafaei | 1458.42 |
| 25 | Yuan Sijun | 1449.92 |
| 26 | Zhou Yuelong | 1444.40 |
| 27 | Anthony McGill | 1442.44 |
| 28 | Ricky Walden | 1430.83 |
| 29 | Matthew Selt | 1424.39 |
| 30 | Zhang Anda | 1421.26 |
| 31 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 32 | Chris Wakelin | 1419.57 |
| 33 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1418.43 |
| 34 | Pang Junxu | 1412.30 |
| 35 | David Gilbert | 1411.24 |
| 36 | Stan Moody | 1408.68 |
| 37 | Ben Woollaston | 1408.05 |
| 38 | Stuart Bingham | 1404.52 |
| 39 | Aaron Hill | 1404.50 |
| 40 | Ryan Day | 1402.16 |
| 41 | Jackson Page | 1395.43 |
| 42 | Daniel Wells | 1394.84 |
| 43 | Oliver Lines | 1392.21 |
| 44 | Ken Doherty | 1392.16 |
| 45 | Tom Ford | 1391.15 |
| 46 | Martin O'Donnell | 1389.98 |
| 47 | Sam Craigie | 1389.28 |
| 48 | Lei Peifan | 1388.73 |
| 49 | Matthew Stevens | 1388.48 |
| 50 | He Guoqiang | 1377.62 |
| 51 | Zak Surety | 1377.20 |
| 52 | Noppon Saengkham | 1374.90 |
| 53 | Lyu Haotian | 1373.67 |
| 54 | Scott Donaldson | 1366.28 |
| 55 | Fan Zhengyi | 1365.58 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Robbie Williams | 1361.69 |
| 58 | Chang Bingyu | 1359.86 |
| 59 | Xu Si | 1357.51 |
| 60 | Jimmy Robertson | 1354.95 |
| 61 | Louis Heathcote | 1349.74 |
| 62 | Jimmy White | 1344.05 |
| 63 | Sunny Akani | 1342.16 |
| 64 | Marco Fu | 1340.68 |
| 65 | Mark Davis | 1338.70 |
| 66 | Jamie Jones | 1337.26 |
| 67 | Robert Milkins | 1336.73 |
| 68 | Liu Hongyu | 1332.16 |
| 69 | David Lilley | 1326.92 |
| 70 | Michael Holt | 1324.38 |
| 71 | Liam Davies | 1320.56 |
| 72 | Ben Mertens | 1314.50 |
| 73 | Dylan Emery | 1314.11 |
| 74 | Jiang Jun | 1313.71 |
| 75 | Liam Highfield | 1311.36 |
| 76 | Long Zehuang | 1311.00 |
| 77 | Jordan Brown | 1305.56 |
| 78 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1304.07 |
| 79 | Steven Hallworth | 1299.68 |
| 80 | Antoni Kowalski | 1296.49 |
| 81 | David Grace | 1291.99 |
| 82 | Liam Pullen | 1282.76 |
| 83 | Ian Burns | 1278.31 |
| 84 | Artemijs Zizins | 1275.55 |
| 85 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1271.17 |
| 86 | Gao Yang | 1269.09 |
| 87 | Julien Leclercq | 1268.11 |
| 88 | Lan Yuhao | 1268.01 |
| 89 | Yao Pengcheng | 1264.79 |
| 90 | Gong Chenzhi | 1262.81 |
| 91 | Wang Yuchen | 1262.36 |
| 92 | Allan Taylor | 1260.51 |
| 93 | Duane Jones | 1259.75 |
| 94 | Ross Muir | 1258.13 |
| 95 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 96 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1250.44 |
| 97 | Sanderson Lam | 1250.03 |
| 98 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1244.19 |
| 99 | Iulian Boiko | 1242.01 |
| 100 | Mitchell Mann | 1236.94 |
| 101 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1236.38 |
| 102 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1230.63 |
| 103 | Zhao Hanyang | 1230.07 |
| 104 | Huang Jiahao | 1226.91 |
| 105 | Haris Tahir | 1225.35 |
| 106 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1224.50 |
| 107 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1223.43 |
| 108 | Liu Wenwei | 1220.18 |
| 109 | Florian Nüßle | 1215.38 |
| 110 | Mohammed Shehab | 1214.27 |
| 111 | Liam Graham | 1213.60 |
| 112 | Leone Crowley | 1210.97 |
| 113 | Xu Yichen | 1207.96 |
| 114 | Connor Benzey | 1204.63 |
| 115 | Sahil Nayyar | 1201.61 |
| 116 | Bai Yulu | 1201.50 |
| 117 | Farakh Ajaib | 1198.18 |
| 118 | Oliver Brown | 1195.07 |
| 119 | Haydon Pinhey | 1190.79 |
| 120 | Robbie McGuigan | 1186.99 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1178.39 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1162.50 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1150.34 |
| 124 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1144.37 |
| 125 | Hatem Yassin | 1130.76 |
| 126 | Ng On Yee | 1125.94 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1081.47 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1043.39 |
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.