The World Snooker Championship threw up plenty of surprises, with none of the top ten seeds progressing to the last four
Top seed Luca Brecel and four-time world champion Mark Selby were eliminated in the first round, while the likes of Ronnie O'Sullivan and Judd Trump also fell before the tournament reached the semi-final stage.
Ultimately, Kyren Wilson claimed his first world title with a relatively routine victory over Welshman Jak Jones in the final earlier this week, with Jones bemoaning his less-than-ideal preparations for the decider.
Complaints of a different kind had come from Wilson earlier in the tournament, with the Englishman suggesting on the Snooker Club podcast that the pockets at the Crucible were tighter than in previous years. A new batch of Star tables were in use at the Crucible for this event compared to those used in previous years.
Wilson's claims were echoed by Shaun Murphy who said, "I don't know who made the decision to make the pockets smaller but they probably should have consulted with the players first. Imagine them making the goals at Old Trafford smaller. It doesn't seem right, does it?"
The scoring from the tournament would certainly suggest that something has changed over the past few years - with the number of centuries (63) well down from 90 in 2023 or 109 in 2022.
Stephen Hendry, for one, is not interested in excuse-making.
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Stephen Hendry uninterested in pocket complaint from World Snooker Championship
Seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry spoke this week about the pockets at the World Snooker Championship. Though he did not suggest any dishonesty on the part of the players, he doubted whether it was a valid excuse when so many of the world's best had fallen early in the tournament:
There's been a lot of talk about the tight pockets. I'm not out there playing, the players are playing so you've got to trust their opinions. But what happened to all the so-called best players in the world? Ronnie, Judd, Mark Williams, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy, Mark Allen the new world number one...
I'm sure I'll get a backlash from the players saying the tables were tight, but I say what I see.
In reality, the complaint of tightening pockets at the Crucible has been a recurring one down through the years, with complaints about the pocket size necessitating an explanatory video from the World Snooker Tour as far back as 2016.
Whatever impact the pockets had on this year's World Snooker Championship, fans will surely be in agreement that the unpredictability made it a particularly memorable tournament.
All eyes will be on Kyren Wilson next year to see if he can defeat the infamous "Crucible curse" which has seen no first-time champion retain their crown since the event moved to the Sheffield venue in the 1970s.
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