Ronnie O'Sullivan starts his season at the grand prix in Preston today as world champion, world No1and a very sound bet still to be ranked No1 at the end of the campaign.
With two titles and six other occasions on which he reached at least the quarter-finals from last season's eight ranking events, O'Sullivan would have to perform poorly in this, the second of the two-year cycle on which the next official rankings will be based, for his current 5850-point advantage over Stephen Hendry to be overhauled.
A year ago, though, Mark Williams was in a similar position as victory at Preston completed his grand slam of BBC's four networked tournaments. However he fell away sharply to finish behind O'Sullivan on the official list and a mere sixth on the one-year list in the new cycle behind O'Sullivan, Hendry, Paul Hunter, Matthew Stevens and a resurgent Jimmy White.
While these players will be thinking of titles and single figure rankings, at least 50 others will be preoccupied with professional survival.
The circuit has been culled from 128 players last year to 96, of which only 56 will be on the 64-man tour in 2005-06 (eight will come from a qualifying school). All players not on the tour will revert to amateur status.
This season's eight ranking events offer only £2.952m in prize money, compared with last season's £4.855m and next spring's Embassy World Championship will be the last with tobacco sponsorship.
Totesport will sponsor the Preston event in succession to LG Electronics while Travis Perkins have two years to run on their agreement to support the UK Championship but, these, the Irish Masters and the Embassy apart, the circuit has no other sponsors.
Sky did not renew its contract with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association to televise two ranking events, preferring a revival of Barry Hearn's World Matchplay Championship and his Premier League.
However, Hearn, who supplies 4% of Sky's sports programming, found no suitable sponsor for the Matchplay but several potential sponsors for darts so the Matchplay has been dropped in favour of another darts tournament.
Sky's only snooker this season will be the seven-man league in the new year, but a more encouraging development is that Eurosport will broadcast November's British Open, which was covered by Sky last year.
TV: BBC1, 3.55pm, today
