Snooker: Hustle Hassle

There's more talk of dodgy dealings in snooker. This time with the group phases in Malta and spurious betting on dead games. Check out various articles here, here and here.

We've discussed the pros and cons before here and here.

The Premier Snooker League doesn't seem to suffer at all with the league format or from spurious betting on dead games. It offers £1'000 per frame and £1'000 per century break. One can't help thinking that if the WSA did the same, ranking events, or events under the control of the WPBSA wouldn't suffer these problems either. Better still, for ranking events, build in a ranking point structure for the results of dead games.

And I've got no sympathy for bookies offering odds on dead games, surely they're asking for trouble when the players aren't playing for anything.