The Champion of Champions (CoC) is a non-ranking snooker event that has been featured on the main tour since 2013. The event consists of tournament winners (for the most part) prior to the event taking place, which makes it an extremely exclusive event to partake in. Sometimes, it can cause confusion as to the players which are included, so hopefully this breakdown for the 2020 CoC makes it clearer for those who wanted to understand the selection criteria.
Firstly, it’s useful to know that only sixteen participants are invited to compete in the CoC. These individuals are made up of the sixteen or so tournament winners from the previous CoC in 2019, up until this current edition in 2020. Effectively, if a player won a tournament then they’re guaranteed a spot in the CoC. There aren’t really any tournaments exempt from this selection, so non-ranking events such as the Shanghai Masters, as well as World Cup and Six-Reds would be included, such as they were last year.
In the case of this year, there have been twenty tournaments since the last CoC (including 2019). However, this doesn’t mean that there were twenty different winners of tournaments in those past twelve months. Quite often the case, certain players are able to capture multiple titles in a season, which would significantly reduce the number of eligible applicants that could compete in the CoC. In fact, out of the twenty tournaments that took place there were only twelve unique winners due to the likes of Trump and Robertson winning multiple trophies within that space of time. This doesn’t include the winner of the third Championship League in a few days’ time.
Even so, this is only twelve out of the required sixteen competitors necessary for the event. Despite being able to capture more than one title, it doesn’t afford those players any benefit when it comes to the CoC so the spaces must still be filled. Most of the time, spaces would be filled by the players who are highest in the world rankings even though they haven’t won a title within the required period. For this year, Mark Allen (5) and John Higgins (8) would be invited to participate in the CoC as players ranked 1-4 and 6-7 had already won a tournament in the prior twelve months.
Another included individual is generally the World Championship runner-up, as has been the case for the past few years. That cements Kyren Wilson’s involvement in the CoC this year. Even if Wilson hadn’t come second place in the WSC, he would still be competing this year due to his ranking position (6) thereby pushing out Higgins from the tournament. However, Higgins will be thanking his lucky stars that Wilson came runner-up to allow his participation.
Other times WST will make their own decisions as to who can play in the CoC. Last year, Reanne Evans was included in the event aided by her success in capturing the Women’s WSC, making her the first female to play in the event as she ran a close contest against Shaun Murphy. Stephen Maguire was also allowed to compete given that he was one-half of the winning team at the World Cup. Additionally, the winner of the World Seniors is invited to test their ability against the rest.
A combination of these factors eventually make up the draw for the Champion of Champions where we can find out which of these winners will come out on top and secure a six-figure payday. The CoC is a unique format, similar to the Coral Cup which instead of looks at the best on the one-year list, it allows the winners of recognised snooker events to go head-to-head as they battle for the coveted title of the ‘Champion of Champions’.
My only question is, will anything be able to top the final we witnessed last year?
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