Pro Tour's playing schedule

Do Pro tour events need to change?

  • pro tours

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • world ranking events

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1
says You cheeky bugger calling me Mehul, the boy that...
says You cheeky bugger calling me Mehul, the boy that...
Member
Oct 2010
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Hi Everyone,

I've been working with a few top player's over the years and occasionally coach them at pro tour's. I have found the tournament system 'a joke' and a disgrace to not only our sport but the players themselves.
Basically if you are not top 30 in the world or around that level you have very few matches especially if your a qualifier. Groups of three and only one goes through!!
Most players travel from different countries around the world to compete. How is it fair for a player to fly to another country spend two/three days in a hotel (most likely a cheap one) and play at most 2/3/4 best of seven matches? (you can play a day tournament national and play 6 to 10 best of fives in that one day!
The time, effort, money and dedication put into such an event and all you get is a few matches?
First of all there should be groups of 4 minimum so a players get's at least 3 matches under his/her belt. Two players should go through into the main event or next round of qualification, then the two who finished 3/4th in their group go into a separate conciliation event!
This would increase participation, increase value and make the world ranking system far more accurate.
I would love to hear peoples opinions on this matter.
I will also add this post to other websites such as ebatt.net, etc. to gain as much exposure to this topic
I look forward to hearing peoples point of views and possibly a way to make a change in the system so we can continue pushing our sport forward.
 
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I've been thinking about this lately as well.
Seeded players who lose their first round match only get to play 1 match. News of this month was that Ovtcharov participated in 6(?) World Tour Grand Finals but never won a match meaning that everytime he had to travel far to another country like Dubai just to pack his bags again after a depressing loss in the first round.
In the qualifier groups there's only one out of three getting through, which is often just the highest seeded player of the group. Must be depressing when you're first seed of a group and then an unranked Chinese talent beats you 4-0.

Already on national level people don't want to play these kind of tournaments. I often hear from players that they don't go to single-day-tournaments because of the low amount of matches over a full day. Even if you get through such a group, you'll probably have to wait for hours between main draw matches.

Bigger qualifier groups definitely seem a good idea to me but I think that on international level, it will make things "too complex" for the organisation. More matches, more time, more umpires needed, more gathering and processing of results.
 
says You cheeky bugger calling me Mehul, the boy that...
says You cheeky bugger calling me Mehul, the boy that...
Member
Oct 2010
36
100
165
lovely response, thank you.

I agree with you about everything accept for 1 thing the last quote Bigger qualifier groups definitely seem a good idea to me but I think that on international level, it will make things "too complex" for the organisation. More matches, more time, more umpires needed, more gathering and processing of results.

You must remember most qualifiers are not super stars meaning they are used to playing in normal TT conditions and therefore increasing match volume is not as difficult as you say or may think.
what do i mean: you could have small area's for the qualifiers, you could make themselves umpire their group matches and you could have them playing best of five instead of best of 7.

Ultimately there is always a solution for a problem. I, and as you do see flaws with the current system therefore this needs to be addressed and solutions need to be found. Dont shy away form problems face it and find away otherwise there's no hope for future development for any of us.
 
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I guess I'll have to take that from you as haven't worked with top players. :) Best of five matches would definitely be a compensation for the time, and small area's for space problems. However I have no idea how top players and the ittf look at players themselves umpiring their group's matches. It just doesn't seem professional enough to me and probably the ittf also wants to control such 'official' results by means of official and neutral umpires, just like in any other sport.
 
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