Who will win the £150,000 Home Nations Series bonus? Thrilling finish in store

The player who earns the most cumulative prize money across this season’s four Home Nations Series events and finishes top of the standings will bank the £150k kitty.

This additional ‘BetVictor Bonus’ prize - sponsored by the title bookmaker - has been a feature of the professional circuit over the past several years. However, this season for the first time, the concept only involves only the Home Nations tournaments.

It has been another very intriguing Home Nations Series campaign with three different winners from the three completed events, so far. The fourth and final event of the cycle is the 2025 Welsh Open which takes place in February.

At the English Open, Neil Robertson withstood a thrilling rally from maiden finalist Wu Yize to win his first ranking event in nearly two-and-a-half years.

In a meeting of the world’s top two ranked players, World Champion Kyren Wilson brushed aside world number one Judd Trump in the final to win the Northern Ireland Open.

The most recent leg of the term came at the Scottish Open where world number 84 Lei Peifan stunned the snooker world by claiming his maiden ranking crown after denying Chinese compatriot and fellow 21-year-old Wu in the final. Lei became the lowest ranked winner of a ranking tournament in over 31 years.

Due to the spread of event champions, the race for number one is very evenly poised. Mathematically, a plethora of cueists could still come through the pack at the last minute and take top spot, but realistically the pool of contenders is much smaller. The current top 10 is as follows:

• 1) Neil Robertson: £118,600
• 2) Kyren Wilson: £114,400
• 3) Lei Peifan: £110,000
• 4) Wu Yize: £90,000
• 5) Judd Trump: £58,200
• 6) Mark Allen: £39,600
• 7) Chris Wakelin: £39,600
• 8) Barry Hawkins: £31,200
• 9) Ishpreet Singh Chadha: £30,000
• 10) Pang Junxu: £30,000

Australia’s Robertson holds a slender lead at the top with fellow title winners this season Wilson and Lei occupying the remaining podium places. Two-time event runner-up Wu Yize is not far back either.

These top four players all have destiny in their own hands. If any one of them wins the Welsh Open title in Llandudno on February 16th, they will also secure the BetVictor Bonus, regardless of results elsewhere.

Newly minted UK Champion Trump - who withdrew from the Scottish Open - may be inclined to play in the upcoming edition of the Welsh Open, with the additional incentive of the £150,000 bonus.

The Welsh Open is one of the few professional titles Trump has yet to win (he was runner-up in 2017 and 2022). He would sneak in via the back door and swoop the bonus prize if he was to win the tournament and neither Robertson or Wilson reached the final along with him.

The top end payouts for the 2025 Welsh Open are: winner: £100,000, runner-up: £45,000, losing semi-finalists: £21,000, losing quarter-finalists: £13,200, losers in last 16: £9,000 - so there are too many exact permutations to list with so many players still involved in the chase.

With a difference of £55k between the winner and runner-up of the Welsh Open, if someone involved in that final needs to win to also claim the BetVictor Bonus, there is an overall difference of £205,000 between winning and losing that match.

At the 2023 Welsh Open, Robert Milkins found himself in a similar scenario as he defeated Shaun Murphy in the final to take both the tournament and order of merit titles on the same day, and a combined prize of £230,000 - by far the biggest payday of his career.

From the five completed BetVictor Bonus order of merit races (to date) since it was introduced in the 2019/20 season, Trump has won three of them, including last season's. Besides Milkins, John Higgins was the other winner (2021/22).

It is important to note that this bonus prize does not get added to a player’s ranking totals.