Mark King syspended with immediate effect

Whats the latest on this ?

wish i knew, if he gets a light sentence after what happened to the chinese lads then it's no justice is it

No news since he was suspended. 

WillHill still sitting on the money from the match in question.

Is this still going on ?

It would appear so, yes.  I still haven't been paid out / refunded, nothing has been mentioned by the authorities, and King is still not playing.

It's been what, 6 or so months since the suspension, so not yet an outlandish amount of time by the usual standards of these matters, though given it's apparently concerning just one match, you'd wonder why it does seem to be dragging on. Unless it's widened in scope from the outset, difficult to know. King did have the right to appeal the suspension and chose not to do so, whatever that suggests. More interesting, he's been selling stuff off recently, including his star table, which really would suggest he himself sees little chance of a reprieve coming.

Very interesting, mate.  The match in question (certainly the red flag raising one) was 13th Feb, so we're already past 7 months, and only one month shy of the total time the investigation into the Chinese players took!

(granted I guess some of the resources available to them might have been tied up on the Chinese cases until the conclusion of that)

Being a bit pedantic here mate but from Liangs suspension to decision was 8 months but i think that investigation was ongoing for months prior to that, possibly flowing seamlessly from the assault investigation and charge. But i think you're nail on head there with resources. They obviously threw the kitchen sink at that one and, for whatever reason, they seemed determined to have it wrapped up by the end of the season and not drag on into summer. Had a look at past cases and 6/7 months seems about average though a relatively simple case like Jamie Jones was all done in 4 which you'd think might apply to King. Don't know really, maybe it's just not a priority, i don't see why they couldn't at least release some generic, nothing statement - investigation is ongoing, player remains suspended etc - just to let people know they haven't forgotten about it or are hoping they do and King just disappears and we all carry on like nothing ever happened!

Fair one, mate.

Yeah, I have considered asking WST directly, just to make sure they realise we haven't forgotten!

They managed to get away with never (so far as I'm aware) saying anything about the matches last season that Craigie and Dave jacked in when they decided they'd "had enough"....

Jesus, I'd actually forgotten about the Sam & Dave incidents. Surely they were both given fairly hefty fines but if so, why no announcement? If no penalty was given out, then it needs to be explained why not. They need to be more transparent about this stuff and it's another reminder we're basically dealing with a guys running a professional set up like a bunch of amateurs. At least the scoreboards seem to be working which is a major achievement where these guys are concerned

Absolutely, mate.

I did email WST on Thursday morning re the status of the King investigation, BTW, and have so far got nothing back.

Still no response....

Think you'll be waiting mate. I mailed them a couple of times before, just routine queries, and never got as much as a whistle back. I'd bet hard cash whoever the press guy is there has his email set up so that enquiries from the general public go straight to junk.

That right, mate?  Maybe we need to send Fouldsy/Dave Hendon a DM.

I got a reply after chasing it!

Just confirms that the investigation is still on-going and they can't comment on it for now.

O me of little faith!!

At least you got acknowledgment anyway. Wonder if someone over in Bristol was reading the forum

  That thought had crossed my mind, too!  They (bless 'em) included some links to IBAS in case I was unhappy with how WH were dealing with it   I thought that was slightly strange, since I have no doubt that WH will settle (either way) when the results of the investigation have been made public.

I presume there is some sort of bookie protocal for handling stuff like this, not one I've heard of or encountered before though. If or when Kings is charged, i wonder what WH do then? Just settle bets as normal or return stakes or what? Is a strange one tbf.

I am assuming that if they've got him "bang to rights" that bets will be voided and stakes returned.  If not, I presume I'll get paid out.

365 settled straight away ([cynic mode on]but then I had backed King there [/cynic mode off])

Would be curious to know what 365 did with Perry bets. Would seem fair they paid them out, seen as they settled King bets as losers. Have to assume they did, wouldn't be like a bookie to want to have it both ways would it?

Is there a clue about this in the BBC piece that has just popped up on my phone from yesterday?

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/67008159

"We monitor 3,000-plus matches every year. Since the beginning of 2018, there have been 13 matches we know have been fixed, of which 10 were in the Chinese case we've just had - it's 0.1% of matches that have come to notice," he said.

Do we *officially* know of 3 others in that timeframe?

Yeah, saw that earlier mate. Wasn't personally aware of any more, unless you include King which seemed to be just a single match. Don't know qhat exactly he's suggesting there tbh.

Interesting, isn't it?  I just found a Wiki page listing all of the matches that have come under investigation, and there are definitely not three extras listed between the timeframe he speaks about...  (the Perry v King match is listed - as under investigation)

Yeah dont know what to make of it mate. A couple of cases, like Yu Delu, were settled in 2018, though the relevant matches were earlier, so maybe he's counting those. But i don't know if that even adds up. If only we had a hector nunns to quiz him about it

Just realised, we're another three and a bit months on and almost up to 11 months since the match in question, and still no announcement from WST....

Seems you're not the only one asking questions mate. Interesting line in thread about a non tour player being banned twice without any announcement. No idea who is being referred to there.

https://x.com/EdwardsTips_/status/1750141606823444740?s=20

It does hugely have the feel of having been done, dusted and swept under the carpet, mate, there is no getting away from that. 

I accept he has been through a lot in his life - plenty of it not at all good, and there may well have been "mitigating circumstances" that prompted whatever happened to happen (God know, his demons are well documented), but it's a dangerous road to go down, especially when they were quite happy to publicly hang the Chinese lads out to dry.

I doubt it will just go away, and if they are shown to have tried to make it go away, that's a very bad look for the sport indeed.

Interesting that someone has called Butch out as being bent in that thread, too!

Missed the butch comment but pretty much the same group of posters, or one of them anyway, were pointing the finger at Zhang Anda on another recent thread. Who knows really? All i would say is there are two top level pros in particular who have always stood out for me for the gap that exists between their A and D games over the course of their careers. Butch is one and i don't think the other actually needs mentioning

It is hard to say, mate.  It is such a mentally taxing game, as well as just being bloody difficult full-stop, that it doesn't take much of a drop-off for things to look really bad, really quickly. 

There's always that grey area, too, where you might not be giving it your all trying to win, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're deliberately trying to tank either.  You can't play at full throttle the whole time, that is clear.  Even peak Ronnie/Judd have/had dips.

Is there a clue in you mentioning "D game"? 

Ha, that hadn't actually occurred to me mate but you could well take it as one

Just to be clear, that wasn't intended to be casting aspersions on butch, it's just I've always been amazed at how utterly shyte he can be for long stretches of the season. And then he'll pop up from nowhere to reach a world or masters final and the bbc lads will be slobbering over him, "such an underrated player...up there with the greats of the game" etc etc. Just find it a strange one tbh

He is an interesting one, because they always love to tell us about his love for the game, and how, even if there's not a pro-tournament on, he'll still be playing in some pro-am or exhibition.  He's obviously been struggling with his eyes for a while, which I think explains the massive drop-off in recent years, and that remains unresolved.  That night he battered Shon last (?) season, he clearly took tremendous delight from it, and I think surprised himself.  Then he goes and gets battered NTO....  Without knowing about how players prepare ahead of tournaments (eg extra practice), it's hard to read too much into things like that, I think.

Fair post lats. I do remember Bingham being a regular around various pro ams in ireland, especially up in Fergal O'Briens club, where murphy was based for a while, so i think what they say about him is true enough.

And speaking of the devil, somebody randomly posted this wonderful shot from 2015 that i remember vividly. The bit you don't see is Virgo and Hendry (or whoever was with him at the time) discussing his options pre-shot and not coming anywhere close to what he ultimately came up with. It's up there with my favourite ever shots, the majority of which are probably by Alex

https://x.com/ILoveSnooker_/status/1751538989662662859?s=20

Crackerjack alright, mate! 

Sent you a message, BTW 

Got it mate. Cheers

A year on, I thought I'd just try my luck again with Hills.  After over an hour of chat bots, sitting, waiting, chat operators, more sitting and waiting, and a supervisor, they are still refusing to do anything until there is an official announcement from the WPBSA.

An update! Not from WS, mind, but from King himself who is clearly fighting this to the death. Pretty much every assumption I've entertained in this whole crazy saga has been flawed in one way or another, so I'm thinking nothing about it anymore! Just more curious than ever about WS and what its game plan is here.

https://snookerhq.com/2024/05/13/mark-king-gives-snooker-ban-update-after-14-months-in-the-dark/

Wow!  Only just seen this story pop up on my phone! 

Very interesting to hear he's fighting it and has actually got legal representation on a pro bono basis.  Lawyers don't usually take on this sort of work unless they think they're going to win!

Absolutely, wouldn't make much sense if they didn't believe he had any case. Also, it might explain the considerable delay in arranging the hearing if WS was under pressure to solidify its own position. Huge embarrassment for them if they lost this.

100%, mate.  King's tone sounds very upbeat, too, TBH.

if you saw the match in question you can see king is clearly throwing it, cannot believe he will get away with this and allowed back in. Look at xintong, who NEVER threw a match, currently sitting out a near 2 year suspension. Don't tell me king is poor hard  done by innocent.

if you saw the match in question you can see king is clearly throwing it, cannot believe he will get away with this and allowed back in. Look at xintong, who NEVER threw a match, currently sitting out a near 2 year suspension. Don't tell me king is poor hard  done by innocent.

It looked bad.  Nobody's saying it didn't, but unless the WPBSA can show evidence that confirms it was as bad as it looked, he will likely be found innocent and cleared. 

BTW, Zhao is probably going to be banned for the full 30 months that the CPBSA imposed (and subsequently upheld at appeal) upon him, rather than WPBSA's 20.

We obviously don't know the extent of the case they have against king, but i would hope for WS/WPBSA sake it's a bit more thorough than "you only have to look at the video, it's obvious he's trying to throw it m'lud. Prosecution rests". There'll be various betting patterns, bookie testimony you'd imagine, but linking them to the player is the thing. Short of phone/text records, that might prove a difficult thing to do.

There was a load f weird bets all over the country on the 4-0 result. This was a tinpot tournament. Doesn't require columbo figure it out. King actually did a pretty terrible show on trying to make it not look bad if that was his intention , I vaguely remember one middle pocket red which was pretty much a dolly and he missed it by a foot.

Unless there's anything tying him directly or indirectly to those bets, it's circumstantial. 

Snooker does sometimes make you like a right mug, especially if you're not feeling it for whatever reason.  Using your argument, Butch wasn't off again JakJ at the Crucible.

Shot-by-shot on the link below.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieEEAZsG2Yo

As someone's said in the comments, maybe he was feeling rough and some people got wind of it, told their mates etc?  In that sort of tournament, it wouldn't take much money on a correct score bet to raise a red flag.  And it doesn't necessarily mean he was deliberately chucking it.  And Perry didn't exactly play no-miss snooker himself.

*your miss argument

WPBSA only have to satisfy that it's more likely than not to have occurred (civil law balance of probabilities). It's hard to see he has a leg to stand on with dodgy betting patterns matching a dodgy performance. If this was a criminal trial the burden of proof would be much higher and they would need to link the player to payments etc. but no one would ever get banned if that was the standard.

I'm not sure anybody is saying king is likely to get off here, I certainly don't think so anyway. The burden of proof is normally so overwhelming in these cases that I'd say the proportion of those charged winning their case is minuscule. And yet, a nagging doubt persists here. Why is that? If there has been a case where a player was done on the basis of a dodgy video and a number of apparently random bets on various outcomes alone, then I am unaware of it. Even in cases where guilt is uncontested, you will notice an impressively forensic account of the various fixes and how the player is linked to every part of it. Anyway, if it was totally unnecessary to even establish these patterns, why did King have to wait an unprecedented 14 months for a hearing? Why would it even take a month? Not like we're in Sherlock Holmes territory here, is it?

Bottom line is, we haven't actually got a Scooby about what they know/don't know, other than a fairly upbeat message from King himself thanking his pro bono legal team for being amazing.

Some of Perry's own misses in that match would have raised red flags if there had been dodgy betting patterns against him.  Hell, there have been plenty of times in the last season alone where I've been half convinced someone is throwing a match, only for them to eventually fall over the line.  It doesn't always have to be crooked to look bad.

And King did seem to spend quite a bit of time 'shaking out' his left hand after missing, like he was feeling something.  Was he?  Who knows?!

As John says, without some kind of tie to King with those bets, and the time it's taken to get to this stage, it does make you wonder just how flimsy the case against must be.

i still say the biggest fix in snooker history is the higgins v davis world champs

Another three and a half weeks on, and still nothing official....

*from King's statement

More delay, you'd think they could have sorted this one way or the other before the new season so King at least knew where he stood. A month would be the longest you'd expect for a decision in a case like this (the mass Chinese corruption cases took two) so we should be seeing white smoke in the next few days or else the whole farce just gets deeper.

Note: Kings statement came a week after the hearing so we're already over the month waiting already!!

he will be allowed back on tour, just watch

And another three and a half weeks of silence.... 

You could not make this up!

Yan Bingtao: from initial suspension to hearing - 4 months
             from hearing to decision - 47 days

Mark King:   from initial suspension to hearing - 14 months
             from hearing to decison - 58 days and counting...

What the actual f... is going on?

A very good question, mate

Shelley Higgins, niece of alex, posted couple of days ago that verdict was expected "in the next few days." Don't honestly know is she well connected or not, but that would suggest early next week if she is. Snookerbacker mentioned something about king supposedly having a hand injury pre-game. Craig saying he has stuff to post but is waiting for the decision before he does. Just snippets I picked up over the past few days.

Interesting, mate.  I picked up on him shaking his hand out a lot in one of my replies above.

We wait with bated breath.

nice excuse, head injury..no doubt the bosses will swallow it

Dunno but i'm beginning to think, just an inkling, that Shelley might not be all that well connected after all

65 days and counting....

The REALLY weird thing for me, mate, is that if King hadn't told us himself, none of us would be any the wiser that the hearing had taken place at all.  Why are the authorities keeping the whole thing so close to their chests?

Absolutely mate. The radio silence from the beginning is really hard to get the head around. I was perplexed by Kings near total silence - his 6 May statement was and is, I think, his only public utterance on the whole affair - but the corresponding silence from the wpbsa is even more baffling. Pretty certain this must be the first time ever no public announcement was made about a hearing taking place, at the very least that's worthy of the "news" section on the website! Tbh I'm blase about the ultimate finding now, what interests me is the procedure and why the apparent need for stealth. Staying completely open minded but these are big questions to answer.

Yeah, I think Jason Ferguson announcing he'd been suspended is literally their only public comment.  The whole thing is extremely odd.

It wouldn't even shock me that they reached the decision weeks ago, just nobody told the press about it. Nothing would shock me about this case anymore!

I've just checked.  They don't appear to have sneakily stuck him back on the rankings list   Though I note we do only have 126 names on it at present....

Seriously, it wouldn't surprise me if they released the draw for the first 128 event and kingy's name is lurking there in the middle of it. Quizzed by reporters, Jason Ferguson offered a terse "Mark King has been given a wild card with full tour rights. No further comment." Alighting from a brand new Porsche, King winked at the assembled reporters and said it was good to be back. "Just a little misunderstanding was all," he smiled. "I'm glad it's all been cleared up".

Just seeing on twitter ranking pro apparently got 3 year jail sentence for domestic assault. Nowt to do with king and it ain't Liang Wenbo. Name of a mid ranking uk player has been mentioned but not sure if legit so won't mention it. Sure it will all be revealed soon enough. Fck me, what a season and haven't even seen a single shot played yet

Fck it, name well and truly out there. Michael White jailed for 3 years for domestic assault. Weird only hearing about it now after sentencing but there you go.

Well known to suffer from demons, so would have certainly been top half of the list on "Guess Who?" if you were told someone had.  Still a shock, all the same.

True mate, alcoholic and all round mess of a person. I'd read he'd quit the booze 1-2 years ago but no shock if he fell off the wagon and resorted to old ways. Supposedly not first time he'd resorted to violence, fckin skumbag. Bailed in March apparently so was playing in tournaments while all this was going on, WST going to have questions to answer on that front I think.

Just add it to the list, mate!

Oh yeah...it's on the list I'm just about to send straight to Jason Ferguson's junk mail folder to save him the bother of having to read and delete it!

Three calendar months tomorrow since King made it known that he'd had his hearing the previous week.  Still nothing from WST/WPBSA on the matter.....

Few bits from Ferguson here, including on King. Doesn't say a lot but does at least confirm that everything is done and we're all just waiting - and waiting - for a verdict. Interesting he describes the case as "very complex" which definitely suggests King was able to mount a meaningful defence.

Interesting bit about Zhao Xintong whose WpBSA ban is up soon but longer Chinese ban would last another season basically. Ferguson says they'd welcome him back regardless so two federations possibly not singing off the same hymn sheet on these matters. Talking a load of shyte about Michael Shyte at the end.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/16/jason-ferguson-gives-latest-crucible-snookers-olympic-hopes-zhao-xintong-21437717/?ito=article.mweb.share.top.native

Thanks for that, mate - I would have likely missed it. 

So it's the independent tribunal that are still to put it all out there, as it were.  I guess that's fair enough, and means my criticism of the powers that be has been rather unjust.

Knew the CPBSA had given Xintong an extra 6 months to the WPBSA, but the WPBSA had maintained they would honour the CPBSA's ban initially.  Does sound like they are now considering (if not actively) backtracking on that.

No worries mate. I wouldn't be so fast in letting them off the hook tbh, just waiting to see how it all ends up. Perry also refers to the case in a separate piece, sounds pretty upset at how he was treated almost as if he's suggesting they treated him as a suspect too for a time. Just another layer to add to the intrigue. On a tangent, interesting he says he's acting as a "mentor" to robbo which sounds unusual but could be a smart move by both.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/18/joe-perry-remotivated-fight-career-serious-thoughts-retirement-21442874/?ito=article.mweb.share.top.native

Knew Perry and Robbo were working together, but that is interesting about the King stuff!