2024 Champion of Champions Snooker: Four players set to make tournament debut

A quarter of this year’s 16-player field have qualified for this competition for the first time; Bai Yulu, Jak Jones, Igor Figueiredo and Xiao Guodong.

Played in its current guise for the first time in 2013 and held every year since, the Champion of Champions quickly established itself as one of the most popular and unique events on the World Snooker Tour.

Featuring winners of major snooker events from over the past 12 months, the 2024 Champion of Champions will carry a total prize fund of £440,000, with the eventual champion pocketing £150,000.

For full details on the 2024 Champion of Champions, including the draw, results, prize money breakdown, format and how to watch, please visit our tournament information centre here.

Due to several players winning multiple professional events over the past 12 months, champions of big global tournaments away from the main tour have once again been invited to fill the 16-player quota.

One of these invitations goes to 21-year-old Bai, who won the World Women’s Snooker Championship for the first time in her career earlier this year.

The first player from mainland China to claim the crown, Bai’s victory came under huge pressure and expectation on home soil in Changping. The triumph earned Bai a two-year tour card for the professional ranks, and although it has been tough going, so far, on the sport’s top tier, there are genuine hopes that Bai could go further in the professional game than any other woman player has gone before.

Nicknamed ‘The White Rain Princess’, Bai gets her challenge underway against Mark Williams on Tuesday afternoon.

The other player to qualify for this year’s Champion of Champions via a non-professional route is reigning World Seniors Snooker Champion Igor Figueiredo.

From Brazil, Figueiredo is a very familiar name to snooker fans being South America’s greatest-ever player and having played on the professional circuit for several seasons in the past.

Figueiredo won the blue riband event on the World Seniors Snooker Tour at the Crucible Theatre in May, defeating defending champion Jimmy White along the way in the quarter-finals before denying Ken Doherty in the final.

‘The Senna of Snooker’ helps break off the competition on Monday afternoon when he meets reigning Champion of Champions title holder Mark Allen.

In recent years, the runner-up from the most recent World Championship gets a spot; this opened a door for Jak Jones who reached snooker’s biggest showpiece match earlier this year.

Jones - who was a qualifier - enjoyed a sensational run to the title match in Sheffield, defeating Zhang Anda, Si Jiahui, Judd Trump and Stuart Bingham at the Crucible before being denied the sport’s ultimate prize by Kyren Wilson.

The Welshman is second match on in Monday afternoon’s session as he comes up against Gary Wilson.

Xiao Guodong has enjoyed the best spell of his snooker career over the past few weeks, and was the last newcomer to book a place for Lancashire.

Having first played on the professional circuit in 2007, Xiao’s maiden ranking event triumph at last month’s Wuhan Open was a victory 17 years in the making.

Since that success in Wuhan, Xiao went close to more trophyware on home soil in China at the recent International Championship in Nanjing; being ousted 9-8 by Chris Wakelin in the semi-finals. That run to the last four, though, did push Xiao up into the world’s top 16 rankings for the first time.

Xiao is scheduled to face record four-time Champion of Champions winner Ronnie O’Sullivan first up on Thursday afternoon, although O’Sullivan’s participation in the event is not certain given his recent withdrawals from tournaments.