Final 64 for Main Event from 17-20 March2016
Final 64 players who will play in main event starting 17 -20 March
33 automatically go into main event based on their association rankings. Remaining 31 are winners of qualifiers
Very strong field littered with stars from the cue sports disciplines of WPA (mainly American pool 9B/10B/8B), Chinese 8 Ball (C8B), English 8 Ball (E8B) and snooker. This is an exciting and interesting matchup and clash of 4 different styles.
This year has a much bigger representation from WPA with about 2 dozen compared to only a handful from last year.
Notable absentees in main event are top favorites Gareth Potts, Mark Selby (last year's finalist). Too bad Ronnie O not taking part but Ding will be big crowd puller.
Though I think the C8B, E8B and snooker guys will have edge over the WPA guys, I am rooting for the WPA players that I am more familiar with and some snooker players. You can say last year's winner Darren Appleton is a WPA guy even though his background was in E8B :grin:
Top 8 WPA rankings
Ko Pin Yi
Liu Haitao
Kevin Cheng
Darren Appleton
Ko Ping Chung
Carlo Biado
Wu
John Morra
Top 8 Snooker (WPBSA) Rankings
Ding Junhui
John Higgins
Joe Perry
Mark Williams
Neil Robertson
Barry Hawkins
Judd Trump
Michael White
Chinese 8 Ball (CBSA) Rankings
Chu Bingjie
Zheng Yubo
Zhang GuangHao
Shi HanQing
Li Bo
Liu Chung
Wang Yan
Zhang Lei
Liu Yang
Liu Chang
Li Ziseng
Song Binhui
Sun Yangyang
China National team (WPA regulations players)
Li Hewen
Wang Can
Dang Jinhu
Han Haoxiang
International Qualifiers (mixture of WPA, E8B players)
Lee Van
Darryl Peach
Chang Jung Lin
Chang Yu Lung
Vincent Facquet
Toh Lian Han
Xie Jia Zhen
Soheil Vahedi
Thorsten Hohmann
Fu Che-Wei
Chris Melling
Michael Hill
Scott Gillespie
Konrad Juszczyszyn
Ali Maghsoud
Hwang Yong
China Domestic Qualifiers (mostly Chinese 8 ball specialists)
15 qualifier winners