The Premier League caravan

05:28:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

I don’t understand why, but the official web-site of the Premier League has a big banner with Frank Sinatra. And it made me remember of a beautiful song of his: "Autumn in New York/Why does it seem so exciting (inviting)/Autumn in New York/It spells the thrill of first-nighting". Well, what if we were to replace New York with UK? Since is almost autumn and the Premier League kicks off tomorrow. :)) Frank’s music always make me feel better...and when snooker is also involved in the equation, well let’s just I’m a very happy Snooker Loopy. :P
So, I thought it will be a nice idea, to remember what Premier League is all about, don’t you think? :)


The Premier League is practically one of the oldest professional snooker tournaments, for it saw the first light in 1987. A long time ago! It’s considered to be a very challenging tournament since each shot has a time limit (25 seconds), has a different format and a big crowd of snooker fans is involved.

The Snooker Caravan kicks off
The tournament, although is not a ranking one, is very popular among the snooker players and snooker lovers, mainly because the whole crew travels the UK high and low. It’s like a modern "snooker caravan", trying to get snooker to more people, trying to provide genuine snooker to the public and making it in the best possible way, with the best players from world’s top 10.
So, if the Wild West was conquered with the gun in the right hand and the Bible in the left one, the UK will be conquered with the cue in the right (or left hand:P) and the soul on the snooker table. :))
This year we have 10 venues (for the round-robin stage) which will held great snooker matches and gather snooker fans from all around the country and one more (Norfolk) for the semi-finals and the big finale.


Who shall we see playing? "The Magnificent 7" as I like to call them, are : Shaun Murphy (defending champion), Ronnie O`Sullivan, Mark Selby, Mark Williams, Neil Robertson, Ding Junhui and Marco Fu (who qualified for the PL after winning the Championship League).


How is this Premier League thing, played? First of all, this is "round-robin" tournament, meaning that each player will have the opportunity to play against any other player from the tournament in turn. At this stage the players play each other once in a 6-frame match, through the semi-finals- the best of 9 and in the finale- the best of 13.
As I’ve already told you, there’s a time limit, of 25 seconds per shot, every delay resulting in 5 points penalty. However, each player has the right to 5 time-outs, during which the time clock is stopped and the player can take the shot with no timing pressure; still the player can’t use the time-out rule more than 3 times per frame.
Each victory is awarded 2 points and each draw gets 1 point.

The Magnificent Seven are ready to start the battle
In its 23 years of "activity" the Premier League has seen many great names. Ronnie O`Sullivan has dominated the tournament, winning 8 titles (5 in a row), Stephen Hendry has won 6 titles and the veteran Steve Davis (the first snooker player to win this tournament) has won 4 consecutive trophies.
The 2010 Premier League marks its debut with two great matches: Shaun Murphy v. Ding Junhui and Ronnie O`Sullivan v. Marco Fu, on September 2.


Good luck to "The Magnificent Seven"!!! :))

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