The 2018 Q School was a series of three

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

tournaments held at the start of the

2018–19 snooker season The 2018–19 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 10 May 2018 and 23 June 2019. The season was made up of ranking tournaments, non-ranking tournaments and variant tournaments. In tota ...

. An event for amateur players, it served as a qualification event for a place on the professional

World Snooker Tour The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, ...

for the following two seasons. The events took place in May 2018 at the Meadowside Leisure Centre in

Burton-upon-Trent Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. At the 2021 census, it had a population of 7 ...

, England with a total 12 players qualifying via the three tournaments.

Format

The 2018 Q School consisted of three events. The three events had 202 entries competing for 12 places on the main tour, four players qualifying from each of the three events. All matches were the best of seven frames.

Event 1

The first 2018 Q School event was held from 14 to 19 May 2018 at the Meadowside Leisure Centre in

, England.

Jak Jones Jak Jones (born 29 July 1993) is a Welsh professional snooker player. He is from Cwmbran, Torfaen, in South Wales. He became a professional in 2010 at the age of 16 after winning the 2010 European Under-19 Snooker Championship in Malta. As a ...

, Sam Baird, Hammad Miah and Sam Craigie qualified. All four players who qualified had previously lost their professional status after the 2018 World Snooker Championship. In one match, Barry Pinches played his son Luke. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–2 * 4–2 * 4–0 * 4–0

Event 2

The second 2018 Q School event was held from 20 to 25 May 2018 at the Meadowside Leisure Centre in

, England. Jordan Brown,

Craig Steadman Craig Steadman (born 14 July 1982) is an English former professional snooker player. Career Early career Steadman began his professional career by playing Challenge Tour in 2001, at the time the second-level professional tour. He reached the ...

Lu Ning Lu Ning (; born 1 January 1994 in Jilin) is a former professional snooker player from the People's Republic of China who, in 2023, was banned from professional competition for five years and four months after committing match-fixing offences. ...

and

Zhao Xintong Zhao Xintong (; born 3 April 1997) is a Chinese professional snooker player and the reigning World Snooker Champion. He first turned professional in the 2016–17 season, aged 19, having previously recorded wins against a number of top p ...

qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–1 * 4–0 * 4–2 * 4–1

Event 3

The third 2018 Q School event was held from 26 to 31 May 2018 at the Meadowside Leisure Centre in

, England.

Thor Chuan Leong Thor Chuan Leong (; born 24 March 1988), better known on the main tour as Rory Thor, is a Malaysian professional snooker player. Career Thor, based in Penang, Malaysia represented his country at the 2006 & 2010 Asian Games and in the 201 ...

, Kishan Hirani,

Andy Lee Andy Lee may refer to: __NOTOC__ Sportspeople * Andy Lee (American football) (born 1982), American football punter * Andy Lee (boxer) (born 1984), Irish boxer * Andy Lee (footballer, born 1982), English footballer for Bradford City * Andy Lee (footb ...

and

Ashley Carty Ashley Carty (born 17 July 1995) is an English professional snooker player. Career At age 17, he reached the final of the 2013 EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championship, losing 0–6 to James Cahill. He won the 2014 English Under-21 Champi ...

qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–1 * 4–2 * 4–2 * 4–2

Q School Order of Merit

A Q School Order of Merit was produced for players who failed to gain a place on the main tour. The Order of Merit was used to top up fields for the

where an event failed to attract the required number of entries. The rankings in the Order of Merit were based on the number of frames won in the three Q School events. Players who received a bye into the second round were awarded four points for round one. Where players were equal, those who won the most frames in the first event were ranked higher and, if still equal, the player with most frames in event two. The Order of Merit was used to give priority places for the new

Challenge Tour The Challenge Tour, currently titled as the HotelPlanner Tour for sponsorship reasons and also sometimes referred to as the European Challenge Tour, is the second-tier men's professional golf tour in Europe. It is operated by the PGA European To ...

which was played during the

. The leading players in the Q School Order of Merit are given below.

Two-season performance of qualifiers

The following table shows the rankings of the 12 qualifiers from the 2018 Q School, at the end of the

2019–20 snooker season The 2019–20 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 9 May 2019 and 22 August 2020. In total, 47 events were held during the season: however, the ending of the season was highly disrupted by the ...

, the end of their two guaranteed seasons on the tour, together with their tour status for the

2020–21 snooker season The 2020–21 snooker season was a professional snooker season with tournaments played from 13 September 2020 to 9 May 2021. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the season was played almost entirely without a live audience with only the 2021 W ...

. Players in the top-64 of the rankings retained their place on the tour while those outside the top-64 lost their place unless they qualified under a different category.

References

{{2018–19 snooker season Q School (snooker) 2018 in English sport 2018 in snooker Sport in Burton upon Trent