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 |
| UK Championship | Dec. 3, 2025, 7:17 p.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 6 | 2 | Zhou Yuelong |
| UK Championship | Dec. 3, 2025, 7:17 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 6 | 3 | Si Jiahui |
| UK Championship | Dec. 4, 2025, 1:20 p.m. | 2025 | Zhang Anda | 6 | 2 | Zhao Xintong |
| UK Championship | Dec. 4, 2025, 1:20 p.m. | 2025 | Ding Junhui | 6 | 5 | Scott Donaldson |
| UK Championship | Dec. 4, 2025, 7:11 p.m. | 2025 | John Higgins | 5 | 6 | Shaun Murphy |
| UK Championship | Dec. 4, 2025, 7:11 p.m. | 2025 | Elliot Slessor | 0 | 6 | Barry Hawkins |
| UK Championship | Dec. 5, 2025, 1:07 p.m. | 2025 | Pang Junxu | 4 | 6 | Neil Robertson |
| UK Championship | Dec. 5, 2025, 1:07 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 6 | 2 | Ding Junhui |
| UK Championship | Dec. 5, 2025, 6:57 p.m. | 2025 | Shaun Murphy | 6 | 3 | Zhang Anda |
| UK Championship | Dec. 5, 2025, 6:57 p.m. | 2025 | Barry Hawkins | 2 | 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 | 1644.06 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1600.20 |
| 3 | Kyren Wilson | 1569.65 |
| 4 | Neil Robertson | 1567.27 |
| 5 | Mark Williams | 1565.79 |
| 6 | Shaun Murphy | 1560.32 |
| 7 | Zhao Xintong | 1551.57 |
| 8 | Mark Allen | 1543.59 |
| 9 | John Higgins | 1539.63 |
| 10 | Xiao Guodong | 1523.71 |
| 11 | Ding Junhui | 1517.91 |
| 12 | Barry Hawkins | 1515.27 |
| 13 | Wu Yize | 1514.76 |
| 14 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1506.25 |
| 15 | Stephen Maguire | 1486.76 |
| 16 | Si Jiahui | 1481.09 |
| 17 | Elliot Slessor | 1478.67 |
| 18 | Ali Carter | 1477.85 |
| 19 | Luca Brecel | 1477.26 |
| 20 | Jack Lisowski | 1474.98 |
| 21 | Joe O'Connor | 1472.72 |
| 22 | Zhou Yuelong | 1458.50 |
| 23 | Hossein Vafaei | 1453.47 |
| 24 | Gary Wilson | 1451.33 |
| 25 | Jak Jones | 1448.56 |
| 26 | Zhang Anda | 1445.85 |
| 27 | Yuan Sijun | 1444.57 |
| 28 | Pang Junxu | 1439.62 |
| 29 | Anthony McGill | 1433.43 |
| 30 | Ricky Walden | 1421.25 |
| 31 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 32 | David Gilbert | 1418.35 |
| 33 | Ben Woollaston | 1417.96 |
| 34 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1417.35 |
| 35 | Matthew Selt | 1414.37 |
| 36 | Ryan Day | 1408.84 |
| 37 | Chris Wakelin | 1408.58 |
| 38 | Stan Moody | 1404.63 |
| 39 | Stuart Bingham | 1401.60 |
| 40 | Lei Peifan | 1397.74 |
| 41 | Aaron Hill | 1395.15 |
| 42 | Scott Donaldson | 1394.55 |
| 43 | Daniel Wells | 1394.03 |
| 44 | Sam Craigie | 1390.69 |
| 45 | Jackson Page | 1386.48 |
| 46 | Tom Ford | 1386.28 |
| 47 | Matthew Stevens | 1383.48 |
| 48 | Zak Surety | 1383.27 |
| 49 | Martin O'Donnell | 1382.29 |
| 50 | Lyu Haotian | 1382.12 |
| 51 | Oliver Lines | 1381.30 |
| 52 | Ken Doherty | 1381.05 |
| 53 | He Guoqiang | 1376.28 |
| 54 | Noppon Saengkham | 1372.99 |
| 55 | Xu Si | 1368.25 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Chang Bingyu | 1361.43 |
| 58 | Robbie Williams | 1360.87 |
| 59 | Fan Zhengyi | 1356.36 |
| 60 | Louis Heathcote | 1355.91 |
| 61 | Jimmy Robertson | 1353.63 |
| 62 | Marco Fu | 1344.32 |
| 63 | David Lilley | 1343.92 |
| 64 | Michael Holt | 1342.32 |
| 65 | Jamie Jones | 1337.34 |
| 66 | Robert Milkins | 1335.88 |
| 67 | Jimmy White | 1334.04 |
| 68 | Sunny Akani | 1333.89 |
| 69 | Long Zehuang | 1331.18 |
| 70 | Liu Hongyu | 1331.11 |
| 71 | Mark Davis | 1330.25 |
| 72 | Jiang Jun | 1317.67 |
| 73 | Dylan Emery | 1314.08 |
| 74 | Liam Highfield | 1312.31 |
| 75 | Liam Davies | 1311.53 |
| 76 | Steven Hallworth | 1310.32 |
| 77 | Ben Mertens | 1307.04 |
| 78 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1304.02 |
| 79 | Ian Burns | 1300.86 |
| 80 | Jordan Brown | 1296.52 |
| 81 | Julien Leclercq | 1292.78 |
| 82 | Antoni Kowalski | 1291.02 |
| 83 | Liam Pullen | 1289.77 |
| 84 | Artemijs Zizins | 1287.55 |
| 85 | David Grace | 1284.09 |
| 86 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1271.17 |
| 87 | Yao Pengcheng | 1265.45 |
| 88 | Duane Jones | 1263.97 |
| 89 | Gao Yang | 1262.73 |
| 90 | Allan Taylor | 1262.27 |
| 91 | Lan Yuhao | 1260.93 |
| 92 | Ross Muir | 1258.59 |
| 93 | Wang Yuchen | 1256.59 |
| 94 | Gong Chenzhi | 1256.36 |
| 95 | Iulian Boiko | 1253.60 |
| 96 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 97 | Sanderson Lam | 1251.47 |
| 98 | Mitchell Mann | 1250.50 |
| 99 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1244.09 |
| 100 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1242.67 |
| 101 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1242.49 |
| 102 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1237.69 |
| 103 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1237.61 |
| 104 | Liam Graham | 1228.27 |
| 105 | Huang Jiahao | 1227.45 |
| 106 | Haris Tahir | 1224.43 |
| 107 | Liu Wenwei | 1222.57 |
| 108 | Zhao Hanyang | 1222.21 |
| 109 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1217.14 |
| 110 | Mohammed Shehab | 1214.27 |
| 111 | Xu Yichen | 1210.82 |
| 112 | Florian Nüßle | 1208.50 |
| 113 | Connor Benzey | 1207.05 |
| 114 | Leone Crowley | 1204.06 |
| 115 | Bai Yulu | 1203.48 |
| 116 | Sahil Nayyar | 1194.85 |
| 117 | Farakh Ajaib | 1192.61 |
| 118 | Robbie McGuigan | 1189.68 |
| 119 | Haydon Pinhey | 1186.50 |
| 120 | Oliver Brown | 1186.20 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1172.58 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1155.90 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1155.38 |
| 124 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1138.59 |
| 125 | Hatem Yassin | 1136.74 |
| 126 | Ng On Yee | 1122.56 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1089.03 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1040.78 |
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.