The 10 Most Important Snooker Tournaments

Well, we know that World Snooker have "majors" and "minors" tournaments, as well as the "ranking" and the "non-ranking" events, but does it means that the major ones are really more important than the minors?

No. Events like the Paul Hunter Classic and the Champion of Champions are miles bigger than events like the Indian Open, World Open, Australian Open and few others.
They're just considered bigger events by World Snooker because they have a bigger prize money and they offers more ranking points, but if we consider the crowd's interest and the buzz around the tournaments, we will see a different thing.

Here's my list of the 10 Most Important Snooker Tournaments:
(All here is just my opinion)

1. World Snooker Championship

2. The Masters

3. UK Championship

4. Champion of Champions

5. Welsh Open

6. International Championship

7. Paul Hunter Classic

8. China Open

9. Wuxi Classic

10. Players Championship Grand Final



Well, some things of this list that we can look for is:

• The UK Championship used to be the second bigger event of the sport, but the 128 draw wasn't a good idea for the event, so The Masters, which have a big tradition as well, got a bigger buzz and crowd's interest due to it's attractive format. But anyway, both tournaments still are Big Events alongside with the World Championship.

• The inaugural Champion of Champions was played in 2013, but the tournament is already considered the 4th Bigger Tournament of the World for me. It's because the tournament have a very nicely format, played by players that have won anything in the season then it's very high level, and the arena is very dynamic, building a great atmosphere.

• You can see that I'd put the Paul Hunter Classic - which is an European Tour/Minor Event - in front of 8 Ranking/Major Events. The crowd loves the Paul Hunter Classic, it turned a very important and traditional event, played in Germany. And I'm not the only who thinks it could already turn a Major Event.

• There's 3 Chinese Events in the list, and it shows how China is growing in the sport, but unfortunately the long travels and whether's difference is a X Factor of why a lot of players withdraw Chinese Events and China didn't got a Big Event yet.

• The new Grand Prix will be played for the first time in 2015, and it have a very attractive format as well, and the fact that ITV - which always make good coverage of snooker - will show the tournament live, makes the tournament looking to enter in this list soon, but I can't say that a tournament that never was played, is one of the 10 most important ones.

• Some tournaments like the German Masters and the Shanghai Masters could be there as well, they are good events, and have a big buzz, but maybe their schedules isn't so good, then some players withdraw or reach tired for the tournament and it's bad for the level of the events.

There's some Ranking/Major Tournaments that could drop out of the tour in my opinion. 

They could still be professional tournaments because they're good for the globalization, but World Snooker put so much money and ranking points on them, and I think they could be just European Tour's or small events, they're:

Indian Open

Australian Open

World Open

One of those 10 events, the Paul Hunter Classic, will be played this weekend, and the legend who inspired me in the name of this blog, returns to action tomorrow against Noppon Saengkham (all times here).

I didn't made a preview of the tournament here, but you can follow all that's happening in Germany via Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook.