In the game of snooker before the 80’s you would have only one billiards tournament available to you as a professional player that would be the world championship?  Even with this the players were always seeded by the amount of wins they had.  It worked in a way that the champion from the year before was number one, and number two would be the person who had been runner up.

But after the 1976 championship they decided to try a ranking system, which they would base the seeds for anymore championships on, except the top two seeds who would continue to be picked in the same manner.  Points were given in the following way, the champion would get 5 points, while the person who was the runner-up got four, and semi-finalist got three down to the last 16 who would receive one.

With this in mind for the performances of 1974 to 1976 the rankings were as followed.  Ray Reardon led with 15 points, followed by Alex Higgins at 9, Eddie Charlton with 8, Fred Davis, Graham Miles, Rex Williams all have 6, Perrie Mans, John Spencer and Dennis Taylor had 5, Gary Owen and John Dunning had 4, Jim Meadowcroft, Cliff Thorburn, Bill Werbeniuk, John Pulman all had 3, and finally David Taylor with 2.

This system was used through the 1982 season.  While in the next season another two events were added to the season.  Points for these new events were added as before.  However in 1984 everything changed two more events were added, with equaled six tournaments.

The billiards scoring system was updated and there were 100 people now on the rankings list, although not all of them played in every tournament.  If you were ranked above 65 you played the first round of events and received points from there.  If you reached number 32 in ranking you would get a point, two for the last 16 and if you were champion six.

With this system it is possible for a player who doesn’t play consistently can finish in the top 32, while someone who plays more may actually finish out of the top 50.  With more people wanting to play the WPBSA finally decided to top of the number of players who were allowed to play at 128.
It’s indeed a complicated ranking system that you must study to understand.