The 2022 Snooker Turkey Masters has also entered a brief window period, with only three races left so far this season, including the Gibraltar Open.
The Gibraltar Open is not a historic tournament, in fact it was not officially upgraded to a ranking event until 2017, and the championship prize money is only 50,000 pounds, but it is such a small ranking tournament that has attracted many top players this season.
According to Snooker's official entry list, only Mark Selby announced his retirement due to physical reasons among the top 16 players, and the main reason why many superstars signed up was because of the extra prize money of up to 150,000 pounds after the Gibraltar Open.
The Gibraltar Open is the last of the eight Great events of the year, and the player with the most prize points after all eight races will receive an additional £150,000 in prize money, which is an important reason for attracting players to participate.
Based on the current points situation, a total of eleven players (Trump is the defending champion) have the opportunity to compete for the final extra jackpot (Yan Bingtao has lost the opportunity due to not registering for the Gibraltar Open), of which Higgins and Allen are tied for first place, and the two Chinese teenagers Fan Zhengyi and Zhao Xintong are also impressively listed.
Of course, Ronnie O'Sullivan, who has attracted much attention from fans, is also among them, bearing in mind that O'Sullivan has never signed up to participate since the gibraltar Open, and his first participation has also added a lot of uncertainties to the event.
In fact, the Gibraltar Open has invited O'Sullivan to participate more than once before, but O'Sullivan, who has always been unruly, always has all kinds of excuses to refuse to participate, and even before the start of the 2019 Gibraltar Open, he made a statement: I would rather go to the pigs pen to raise pigs than sign up for the competition!
This inappropriate remark was also warned by the World Taiwan Federation at the time, and O'Sullivan still did not participate in the Gibraltar Open for the next two years, and the sudden appearance of this season undoubtedly confused many fans.
In fact, the reason for O'Sullivan's participation is not difficult to guess, at present, in the ranking of the seven races, O'Sullivan's prize points are in sixth place, and there is not much difference with the previous ones, which means that as long as O'Sullivan signs up, he has a great chance to take away the championship prize of 50,000 pounds and the additional reward of 150,000 pounds.
However, according to the latest news report of the Subway Newspaper, O'Sullivan's unprecedented registration for the competition is not only because of the additional prize money of 150,000 pounds, but because the organizers have worked hard to ensure the ratings of this small ranking competition and paid an additional O'Sullivan's huge appearance fee to get the former to agree to participate.
Not long ago, the organizers of the Turkish Masters refused O'Sullivan's request for appearance fees, because O'Sullivan's failure to appear on the field directly led to the ratings of the game was not optimistic, according to british media analysis, for the economic interests of the snooker movement, the organizers had to compromise with O'Sullivan.
No matter how the truth can see that O'Sullivan's registration for the competition is definitely a good thing for the majority of fans, but if it is really as the British media broke the news, combined with O'Sullivan's previous statement that he would rather raise pigs than participate, he has to sigh: "There is really money that can make the ghost grind."