Judd Trump Heads Into Shenzhen Without a Ranking Title This Season

Judd Trump started his Shenzhen Open on Monday with a 5–0 win over Huang Jiahao at the Bao'an Sports Centre. It was a typical result for his season so far. The trophies have been harder to come by.

The world number one did win the Shanghai Masters in August, beating Kyren Wilson 11–6 in the final for the £210,000 top prize. Shanghai is an invitation event, though, and carries no ranking points. The four ranking tournaments played since then went to Mark Selby, Chang Bingyu, Jak Jones and Ali Carter. Trump went out of all four, each time to a player who was on a run.

Four ranking events, four exits

• China Open, Taiyuan: lost 6–3 to Noppon Saengkham in the last 32. Noppon reached the final and lost 10–6 to Selby.
• Wuhan Open: lost 5–1 to Chang Bingyu in the quarter-finals. Chang beat Zhao Xintong 10–7 in the final for his first ranking title.
• British Open, Cheltenham: lost 6–3 to Jak Jones in the semi-finals. Jones beat Selby 10–6 in the final the next day.
• English Open, Brentwood: lost 6–5 to Shaun Murphy in the quarter-finals. Carter took the title, coming back from 5–3 down to beat Mark Williams 9–6.

Three of the four players who beat Trump reached the final, and two of them won it. Murphy is the exception, and he needed a deciding frame to get through.

The rest of his season is very good

Across 20 matches this season Trump has won 16. He has taken 98 frames and lost 49, which works out at exactly two frames won for every one conceded. In the 16 matches he won, his opponents managed 26 frames between them. He beat Zhao 5–1 in the British Open quarter-finals and whitewashed John Higgins 6–0 in Shanghai. CueTracker counts 17 centuries for him in those 20 matches, the highest a 142.

The format tells you where the defeats came from. All four were over 11 frames or fewer, where one loose session against an opponent in form decides the match. The two longest matches he has played this season were the Shanghai semi-final against Wu Yize, best of 19, and the final against Wilson, best of 21. He won them 10–6 and 11–6.

What the Form Rating makes of it

Our Form Rating is a margin-of-victory Elo over the last 12 months. It rewards beating strong opponents and beating them by a wide margin, and it pays no attention to who lifts the trophy. It has Trump top at 1,764, ahead of Zhao on 1,719 and Selby on 1,715.

The defeats did show up. Noppon, Chang and Jones were all rated well below him going in, so each of those losses cost him between 25 and 31 points. The one-frame loss to Murphy cost 12. Each time, the wins either side put the points back. He was on 1,800 after beating Zhao in Cheltenham, and he sits on 1,764 today, the same number he had before the Shanghai Masters started in July.

So the rating and the frame count agree: over the last year nobody on tour has beaten good players as often or as clearly. What neither can tell you is whether that turns into a ranking title soon. The four winners since August show how deep the tour is, and how little a year of form counts for in a best-of-11 against someone playing the week of his career.

What comes next

The Shenzhen Open runs to Sunday 4 October. After it the tour goes to the Waterfront Hall in Belfast for the Northern Ireland Open, from 18 to 25 October. Trump reached the final there last year and lost it 9–8 to Jack Lisowski, who returns as defending champion. The International Championship in Nanjing follows from 31 October.

His full match list for the season, with every score, is on his player profile.