The 2010 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2010 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 17 April and 3 May 2010 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The final ranking event of the 2009-10 snooker season, it was the 34th year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, first held in 1927. The event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association and had a total prize fund of £1,111,000, with £250,000 going to the winner of the event. The tournament was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. John Higgins was the defending champion, but lost in the second round 11–13 to Steve Davis. Neil Robertson won the event after a 18–13 win over Graeme Dott in the final. In winning the event, Robertson was the second player from outside of the British Isles to win the event in the modern era of snooker, and the first Australian to win the event since the disputed 1952 World Snooker Championship which contained only Australian and New Zealand players. There were 60 century breaks made during the event, the highest being a 146 made by both Dott and Mark Allen.

Overview

The World Snooker Championship is an annual cue sport tournament and the official world championship of the game of snooker. Invented in the late 19th century by British Army soldiers stationed in India, the sport was popular in Great Britain. In modern times it has been played worldwide, especially in East and Southeast Asian nations such as China, Hong Kong and Thailand. In the 2010 tournament, 32 professional players competed in one-on-one snooker matches played over several, using a single-elimination tournament format. The 32 players were selected for the event using the snooker world rankings and a pre-tournament qualification competition. In 1927, the first world championship was won by Joe Davis. The event's final took place in Camkin's Hall, Birmingham, England. Since 1977, the event has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. Scotsman John Higgins was the defending champion, having defeated Shaun Murphy 18–9 in the previous year's final. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, who extended their sponsorship of the event for a further four years.

Format

The 2010 World Snooker Championship took place from 17 April to 3 May 2010 in Sheffield, England. The tournament was the last of six ranking events in the 2009–10 snooker season on the World Snooker Tour. It featured a 32-player main draw that was held at the Crucible Theatre, as well as a qualifying draw that was played at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield from 26 February to 9 March. This was the 34th consecutive year that the tournament had been staged at the Crucible. The main stages of the event were broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The top 16 players in the latest world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Higgins was seeded first overall as the defending champion, and the remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on the latest world rankings. The number of frames required to win a match increased throughout the tournament. The first round consisted of best-of-19-frames matches, with the final match being played over a maximum of 35 frames. All 16 non-seeded spots in the main draw were filled with players from the qualifying rounds. The draw for the televised stage of the World Championship was made on Thursday, 11 March 2010 at 11 a.m. GMT.

Prize fund

The breakdown of prize money for the event is shown below:

Tournament summary

First round

Second round

25th anniversary rematch of the 1985 final

Semi-finals

Final

Main draw

Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers).

Qualification

Preliminary qualifying

The preliminary qualifying rounds for the tournament took place on 26 February 2010 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. (WPBSA members not on The Tour.) Round 1 Round 2

Qualifying

The first four qualifying rounds for the tournament took place between 27 February and 5 March at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. The final round took place between 7 and 9 March at the same venue. Round 1 Rounds 2–5

Century breaks

Televised stage centuries

There were 60 centuries in the televised stage of the World Championship.

Qualifying stage centuries

There were 50 century breaks in the qualifying stage of the World Championship.