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 Championship | April 24, 2026, 1:30 p.m. | 2025 | Zhao Xintong | 13 | 9 | Ding Junhui |
| World Championship | April 24, 2026, 1:30 p.m. | 2025 | Zhao Xintong | 13 | 9 | Ding Junhui |
| World Championship | April 25, 2026, 9:11 a.m. | 2025 | Chris Wakelin | 7 | 13 | Neil Robertson |
| World Championship | April 25, 2026, 1:24 p.m. | 2025 | Hossein Vafaei | 13 | 12 | Judd Trump |
| World Championship | April 25, 2026, 6:01 p.m. | 2025 | John Higgins | 13 | 12 | Ronnie O'Sullivan |
| World Championship | April 25, 2026, 6:01 p.m. | 2025 | John Higgins | 13 | 12 | Ronnie O'Sullivan |
| World Championship | April 26, 2026, 8:59 a.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 11 | 13 | Wu Yize |
| World Championship | April 26, 2026, 8:59 a.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 11 | 13 | Wu Yize |
| World Championship | April 28, 2026, 8:56 a.m. | 2025 | Mark Allen | 13 | 11 | Barry Hawkins |
| World Championship | April 28, 2026, 8:56 a.m. | 2025 | Zhao Xintong | 10 | 13 | Shaun Murphy |
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 | 1638.41 |
| 2 | Zhao Xintong | 1628.19 |
| 3 | Mark Selby | 1592.78 |
| 4 | Kyren Wilson | 1574.97 |
| 5 | John Higgins | 1563.06 |
| 6 | Shaun Murphy | 1562.23 |
| 7 | Wu Yize | 1562.08 |
| 8 | Mark Allen | 1558.01 |
| 9 | Mark Williams | 1537.01 |
| 10 | Barry Hawkins | 1535.14 |
| 11 | Neil Robertson | 1528.88 |
| 12 | Xiao Guodong | 1515.76 |
| 13 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1502.38 |
| 14 | Zhou Yuelong | 1500.88 |
| 15 | Ding Junhui | 1495.58 |
| 16 | Ali Carter | 1487.72 |
| 17 | Elliot Slessor | 1473.29 |
| 18 | Luca Brecel | 1470.53 |
| 19 | Zhang Anda | 1468.26 |
| 20 | Jack Lisowski | 1467.20 |
| 21 | Jak Jones | 1461.56 |
| 22 | Si Jiahui | 1451.68 |
| 23 | Stuart Bingham | 1451.65 |
| 24 | Hossein Vafaei | 1449.17 |
| 25 | Stephen Maguire | 1437.81 |
| 26 | Chris Wakelin | 1430.19 |
| 27 | Stan Moody | 1429.23 |
| 28 | Pang Junxu | 1428.99 |
| 29 | Yuan Sijun | 1428.09 |
| 30 | Anthony McGill | 1425.84 |
| 31 | Matthew Selt | 1425.10 |
| 32 | Joe O'Connor | 1424.21 |
| 33 | Chang Bingyu | 1420.66 |
| 34 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 35 | Gary Wilson | 1418.37 |
| 36 | David Gilbert | 1417.38 |
| 37 | Ricky Walden | 1412.32 |
| 38 | Tom Ford | 1406.50 |
| 39 | Jackson Page | 1402.31 |
| 40 | Sam Craigie | 1401.58 |
| 41 | Noppon Saengkham | 1399.06 |
| 42 | Ryan Day | 1396.96 |
| 43 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1389.97 |
| 44 | Lei Peifan | 1388.80 |
| 45 | Martin O'Donnell | 1386.80 |
| 46 | Xu Si | 1384.14 |
| 47 | Robbie Williams | 1382.06 |
| 48 | Jiang Jun | 1381.63 |
| 49 | Daniel Wells | 1377.69 |
| 50 | Zak Surety | 1377.62 |
| 51 | Aaron Hill | 1376.19 |
| 52 | Fan Zhengyi | 1375.15 |
| 53 | Jimmy Robertson | 1373.32 |
| 54 | Scott Donaldson | 1369.97 |
| 55 | Marco Fu | 1368.04 |
| 56 | Matthew Stevens | 1366.57 |
| 57 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 58 | Ben Woollaston | 1363.49 |
| 59 | Liam Highfield | 1360.49 |
| 60 | Lyu Haotian | 1359.77 |
| 61 | He Guoqiang | 1356.27 |
| 62 | Ken Doherty | 1352.54 |
| 63 | Michael Holt | 1349.72 |
| 64 | Oliver Lines | 1349.15 |
| 65 | Julien Leclercq | 1344.56 |
| 66 | Louis Heathcote | 1340.12 |
| 67 | Ben Mertens | 1332.25 |
| 68 | Long Zehuang | 1331.88 |
| 69 | Liam Pullen | 1327.16 |
| 70 | Sunny Akani | 1324.39 |
| 71 | Liu Hongyu | 1323.96 |
| 72 | Dylan Emery | 1321.30 |
| 73 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1320.52 |
| 74 | Jamie Jones | 1320.36 |
| 75 | David Lilley | 1318.39 |
| 76 | Antoni Kowalski | 1315.17 |
| 77 | Gao Yang | 1309.74 |
| 78 | David Grace | 1307.98 |
| 79 | Robert Milkins | 1305.93 |
| 80 | Jimmy White | 1302.50 |
| 81 | Liam Davies | 1301.80 |
| 82 | Mark Davis | 1296.87 |
| 83 | Artemijs Zizins | 1294.67 |
| 84 | Ian Burns | 1290.40 |
| 85 | Allan Taylor | 1288.61 |
| 86 | Jordan Brown | 1288.15 |
| 87 | Iulian Boiko | 1284.46 |
| 88 | Steven Hallworth | 1284.14 |
| 89 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1280.96 |
| 90 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1277.88 |
| 91 | Ross Muir | 1269.95 |
| 92 | Lan Yuhao | 1268.70 |
| 93 | Yao Pengcheng | 1263.46 |
| 94 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1257.58 |
| 95 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 96 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1251.32 |
| 97 | Duane Jones | 1249.96 |
| 98 | Sanderson Lam | 1249.56 |
| 99 | Mitchell Mann | 1247.59 |
| 100 | Wang Yuchen | 1240.31 |
| 101 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1238.91 |
| 102 | Gong Chenzhi | 1232.88 |
| 103 | Liu Wenwei | 1226.82 |
| 104 | Zhao Hanyang | 1224.31 |
| 105 | Robbie McGuigan | 1222.03 |
| 106 | Xu Yichen | 1220.41 |
| 107 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1220.21 |
| 108 | Mohammed Shehab | 1219.13 |
| 109 | Liam Graham | 1214.25 |
| 110 | Huang Jiahao | 1211.53 |
| 111 | Florian Nüßle | 1205.48 |
| 112 | Haris Tahir | 1205.30 |
| 113 | Farakh Ajaib | 1200.56 |
| 114 | Connor Benzey | 1198.25 |
| 115 | Leone Crowley | 1196.01 |
| 116 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1195.04 |
| 117 | Bai Yulu | 1191.04 |
| 118 | Sahil Nayyar | 1187.22 |
| 119 | Oliver Brown | 1176.76 |
| 120 | Haydon Pinhey | 1162.56 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1156.88 |
| 122 | Chris Totten | 1143.32 |
| 123 | Jonas Luz | 1133.22 |
| 124 | Ng On Yee | 1129.25 |
| 125 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1120.11 |
| 126 | Hatem Yassin | 1113.31 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1073.07 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1029.97 |
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.