Snooker is one of the most enduringly popular sports in the world, and particularly in the UK, the home of snooker, the sport is a key part of any bookmaker’s betting portfolio.
Checking out all sports predictions, you will definitely find those for snooker and betting markets on snooker tournaments, and not just the big events like the World Championship. In fact, in many ways, snooker is an ideal sport to bet on. Why? Well, when it comes to sports betting, timing is everything, and few sports offer a schedule as perfectly suited to bettors as snooker. Unlike many sports that have short, intense seasons or sporadic events, snooker’s calendar is thoughtfully structured to provide year-round action.
The World Tour
World snooker has come a long way from its origins in the early 1970s, developing from a parochial sport with just a handful of tournaments each year to a global competition, with multi-million-pound sponsorship and a well-organised series of events, culminating in the World Championship.
Following the opening up of the snooker world in 1991-92, when entry to snooker tournaments was essentially made possible for anyone, defined Tours were developed at the end of the 1990s, with a main World Tour and a secondary Tour for those who were not up to the standard of the World Tour.
Since then, there have been many changes to the structure of the World Tour, but the current schedule has many similarities to the Tours established in golf. There are a series of tournaments that follow a regular schedule and that are open to a set number of players who have qualified for the Tour. There is also a qualifying structure for players to earn promotion to the main Tour.
What The Tour Means for Snooker Betting
So, why does the snooker schedule make it ideal for betting? When you’re betting on a sport, one of the biggest problems is in keeping track of what is going on. The snooker schedule and the organisation of the Tour make things easier for snooker bettors.
For a start, the Tour is confined to 128 qualifying players. Many of those players will remain on the tour for decades: indeed Ronnie O’Sullivan, Mark Williams and John Higgins have been involved at the top end of the game for 30 years and are still among the top-rated players on Tour.
That means once you have got to know a player’s strengths and weaknesses, that information will remain relevant for many years to come, and with only a handful of players leaving and entering the Tour each year, it doesn’t take too long to become familiar with all of the main players.
Having a limited number of players to follow makes things easier for the snooker bettor, and the structure of the Tour provides a regular, consistent flow of events, many of them associated with particular times of the year, enabling snooker fans to focus on one event at a time.
Following the snooker season from the beginning in the summer through to the climax of the World Championship the following spring has a pleasing rhythm that builds like a narrative as the form of players fluctuates and rivalries develop. This makes the whole business of betting on the sport much easier than it is for sports such as horse racing which are far more open-ended and hard to follow.
This matters because in other respects, snooker lags behind other sports. This is most obvious in the case of stats. It is possible to find win percentage stats if you look hard enough, but it is virtually impossible for ordinary snooker punters to get hold of useful stats such as pot success rate, safety success rate or error numbers. Having a defined Tour with a structured schedule makes up for these areas where snooker falls short and gives snooker bettors something to build upon.
Snooker Betting Should Be Fun
You are not going to become rich through betting on snooker. Understanding and accepting that reality ensures that you won’t get drawn into some of the riskier betting behaviour associated with problem gambling. Bet with money you can afford to lose, set strict limits on your betting and focus on the sport, with betting as a fun and occasional sideline.
