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 |
| German Masters | Jan. 30, 2026, 12:55 p.m. | 2025 | Kyren Wilson | 1 | 5 | Shaun Murphy |
| German Masters | Jan. 30, 2026, 7:07 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 5 | 3 | Xiao Guodong |
| German Masters | Jan. 30, 2026, 7:08 p.m. | 2025 | Jimmy Robertson | 1 | 5 | Neil Robertson |
| German Masters | Jan. 31, 2026, 12:53 p.m. | 2025 | Shaun Murphy | 6 | 1 | Neil Robertson |
| German Masters | Jan. 31, 2026, 6:59 p.m. | 2025 | Judd Trump | 6 | 2 | Ali Carter |
| German Masters | Feb. 1, 2026, 12:58 p.m. | 2025 | Shaun Murphy | 4 | 10 | Judd Trump |
| World Grand Prix | Feb. 3, 2026, 5:05 a.m. | 2025 | Mark Selby | 5 | 0 | Aaron Hill |
| World Grand Prix | Feb. 3, 2026, 5:05 a.m. | 2025 | Elliot Slessor | 5 | 2 | Stuart Bingham |
| World Grand Prix | Feb. 3, 2026, 5:05 a.m. | 2025 | Xiao Guodong | 5 | 2 | Kyren Wilson |
| World Grand Prix | Feb. 3, 2026, 5:05 a.m. | 2025 | Zhou Yuelong | 5 | 2 | Stephen Maguire |
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 | 1665.07 |
| 2 | Mark Selby | 1609.59 |
| 3 | Kyren Wilson | 1579.66 |
| 4 | Zhao Xintong | 1561.59 |
| 5 | Shaun Murphy | 1557.53 |
| 6 | John Higgins | 1549.30 |
| 7 | Mark Williams | 1549.00 |
| 8 | Wu Yize | 1545.69 |
| 9 | Mark Allen | 1539.01 |
| 10 | Neil Robertson | 1527.19 |
| 11 | Xiao Guodong | 1513.65 |
| 12 | Ding Junhui | 1512.97 |
| 13 | Ronnie O'Sullivan | 1502.11 |
| 14 | Barry Hawkins | 1492.31 |
| 15 | Ali Carter | 1490.78 |
| 16 | Elliot Slessor | 1490.68 |
| 17 | Si Jiahui | 1480.10 |
| 18 | Luca Brecel | 1478.69 |
| 19 | Zhou Yuelong | 1476.64 |
| 20 | Zhang Anda | 1458.94 |
| 21 | Joe O'Connor | 1451.47 |
| 22 | Jack Lisowski | 1447.66 |
| 23 | Yuan Sijun | 1447.23 |
| 24 | Stephen Maguire | 1445.92 |
| 25 | Jak Jones | 1440.91 |
| 26 | Matthew Selt | 1435.78 |
| 27 | Stuart Bingham | 1432.85 |
| 28 | Anthony McGill | 1432.84 |
| 29 | Tom Ford | 1428.21 |
| 30 | Pang Junxu | 1427.87 |
| 31 | Chris Wakelin | 1424.64 |
| 32 | Chang Bingyu | 1421.28 |
| 33 | Cao Yupeng | 1420.40 |
| 34 | Ricky Walden | 1419.11 |
| 35 | Gary Wilson | 1415.40 |
| 36 | David Gilbert | 1413.36 |
| 37 | Noppon Saengkham | 1410.60 |
| 38 | Hossein Vafaei | 1409.03 |
| 39 | Stan Moody | 1399.41 |
| 40 | Jimmy Robertson | 1398.79 |
| 41 | Ryan Day | 1396.62 |
| 42 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | 1396.01 |
| 43 | Sam Craigie | 1393.28 |
| 44 | Scott Donaldson | 1391.62 |
| 45 | Lei Peifan | 1391.43 |
| 46 | Jackson Page | 1385.56 |
| 47 | Zak Surety | 1383.90 |
| 48 | Ben Woollaston | 1381.83 |
| 49 | Xu Si | 1380.96 |
| 50 | Aaron Hill | 1379.96 |
| 51 | Martin O'Donnell | 1372.01 |
| 52 | Ken Doherty | 1371.83 |
| 53 | Daniel Wells | 1371.77 |
| 54 | Fan Zhengyi | 1369.87 |
| 55 | Lyu Haotian | 1367.33 |
| 56 | Graeme Dott | 1363.80 |
| 57 | Robbie Williams | 1363.19 |
| 58 | Louis Heathcote | 1358.97 |
| 59 | Matthew Stevens | 1358.90 |
| 60 | Oliver Lines | 1355.12 |
| 61 | Jiang Jun | 1354.49 |
| 62 | Marco Fu | 1348.86 |
| 63 | Liam Highfield | 1344.73 |
| 64 | Julien Leclercq | 1344.44 |
| 65 | He Guoqiang | 1342.12 |
| 66 | Michael Holt | 1336.68 |
| 67 | Liu Hongyu | 1336.09 |
| 68 | Long Zehuang | 1334.07 |
| 69 | David Lilley | 1332.36 |
| 70 | Ben Mertens | 1329.36 |
| 71 | Sunny Akani | 1324.39 |
| 72 | Robert Milkins | 1324.13 |
| 73 | Jamie Jones | 1320.04 |
| 74 | Dylan Emery | 1318.88 |
| 75 | Ishpreet Chadha | 1316.02 |
| 76 | Jimmy White | 1314.32 |
| 77 | Liam Davies | 1313.09 |
| 78 | Mark Davis | 1312.62 |
| 79 | Gao Yang | 1300.21 |
| 80 | Artemijs Zizins | 1299.10 |
| 81 | Liam Pullen | 1296.90 |
| 82 | David Grace | 1294.92 |
| 83 | Antoni Kowalski | 1294.37 |
| 84 | Jordan Brown | 1291.37 |
| 85 | Iulian Boiko | 1290.76 |
| 86 | Ian Burns | 1284.66 |
| 87 | Alexander Ursenbacher | 1283.76 |
| 88 | Steven Hallworth | 1281.50 |
| 89 | Lan Yuhao | 1273.04 |
| 90 | Ross Muir | 1271.23 |
| 91 | Bulcsu Revesz | 1267.23 |
| 92 | Mitchell Mann | 1266.98 |
| 93 | Allan Taylor | 1265.33 |
| 94 | Duane Jones | 1262.07 |
| 95 | Sanderson Lam | 1260.97 |
| 96 | Michał Szubarczyk | 1256.70 |
| 97 | Amir Sarkhosh | 1254.93 |
| 98 | Lim Kok Leong | 1252.45 |
| 99 | Cheung Ka Wai | 1251.80 |
| 100 | Wang Yuchen | 1250.97 |
| 101 | Gong Chenzhi | 1244.59 |
| 102 | Yao Pengcheng | 1242.44 |
| 103 | Liu Wenwei | 1230.47 |
| 104 | Liam Graham | 1226.61 |
| 105 | Huang Jiahao | 1224.12 |
| 106 | Mohammed Shehab | 1223.29 |
| 107 | Mateusz Baranowski | 1219.26 |
| 108 | Haris Tahir | 1217.39 |
| 109 | Robbie McGuigan | 1216.58 |
| 110 | Zhao Hanyang | 1213.74 |
| 111 | Farakh Ajaib | 1211.81 |
| 112 | Xu Yichen | 1206.14 |
| 113 | Florian Nüßle | 1203.42 |
| 114 | Chatchapong Nasa | 1202.92 |
| 115 | Connor Benzey | 1199.34 |
| 116 | Sahil Nayyar | 1195.52 |
| 117 | Bai Yulu | 1190.53 |
| 118 | Oliver Brown | 1188.46 |
| 119 | Leone Crowley | 1185.11 |
| 120 | Haydon Pinhey | 1168.25 |
| 121 | Fergal Quinn | 1157.72 |
| 122 | Jonas Luz | 1141.98 |
| 123 | Chris Totten | 1137.57 |
| 124 | Ng On Yee | 1136.67 |
| 125 | Kreishh Gurbaxani | 1125.59 |
| 126 | Hatem Yassin | 1122.32 |
| 127 | Reanne Evans | 1079.99 |
| 128 | Mink Nutcharut | 1033.24 |
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.