Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the white cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Pankaj Arjan Advani is an Indian billiards and former professional snooker player. He is a 23-time International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) world champion. He has won 16 billiards world titles, the IBSF World Billiards Championship on 15 occasions and the World Team Billiards Championship once. In snooker, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship three times, IBSF World six-red championship twice and the IBSF World Team Cup and IBSF World Team Championship one time each. He has the record number of IBSF world championships. He became a snooker professional in 2012/2013.
Ding Junhui is a Chinese professional snooker player and the most successful Asian player in the history of the sport. Throughout his career, he has won 14 major ranking titles, including three UK Championships. He has twice reached the final of the Masters, winning once in 2011. In 2016, he became the first Asian player to reach the final of the World Championship.
Geet Siriram Sethi of India is a professional player of English billiards who dominated the sport throughout much of the 1990s. He is also a notable amateur (ex-pro) snooker player. He is a five-time winner of the professional-level and a three-time winner of the amateur world championships, and holder of two world records, in English billiards. Along with Prakash Padukone, Sethi has co-founded Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation for the promotion of sports in India.
Clive Harold Everton is a sports commentator, journalist, author and former professional snooker and English billiards player. He founded Snooker Scene magazine, which was first published in 1971, and continues as editor as of September 2021. He has authored over twenty books about cue sports since 1972.
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) is the governing body of professional snooker and English billiards based in Bristol, England. It owns and publishes the official rules of the two sports and engages in promotional activities. The Professional Billiard Players Association (PBPA) was founded in 1946, and, after some years of inactivity, was revived in 1968 and renamed the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association in 1970.
The World Billiards Championship is an international cue sports tournament in the discipline of English billiards, organised by World Billiards, a subsidiary of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). In its various forms, and usually as a single competition, the title is one of the oldest sporting world championships, having been contested since 1870.
Martin Gould is an English professional snooker player from Pinner in the London Borough of Harrow. He has appeared in four ranking finals and won one ranking title, the 2016 German Masters.
The Six-red World Championship is a six-red snooker tournament, played with the six colour balls and six reds. Stephen Maguire is the reigning champion.
The 2009 World Professional Billiards Championship, the top international professional competition in English billiards, was held between 2 and 6 September 2009 at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds, England. The 17 players were divided into three groups of four, and one group of five, with the top two in each group advancing into the knock-out round.
The 2009–10 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 16 May 2009 and 8 May 2010. There were six ranking events, two less than in the previous season. The Bahrain Championship was not held again, and the Northern Ireland Trophy was removed from the calendar too. The Jiangsu Classic was held for the first time.
The IBSF World Snooker Championship is the premier non-professional snooker tournament in the world. The event series is sanctioned by the International Billiards and Snooker Federation. A number of IBSF champions have gone on to successful careers in the Pro ranks, notably Jimmy White (1980), James Wattana (1988), Ken Doherty (1989), Stuart Bingham (1996), Marco Fu (1997), Stephen Maguire (2000) and Mark Allen (2004). Both Ken Doherty and Stuart Bingham have gone on to win the professional World Snooker Championship.
The 2010 World Professional Billiards Championship, the top international professional competition in English billiards, was held between 27 and 31 October 2010 at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds, England. The 20 players were divided into four groups of five, with the top two in each group advancing into the knock-out round.
The 2011 World Billiards Championship, the top international competition in English billiards, was held between 24 and 31 October 2011 at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds, England. The 34 players were divided six groups of four and two of five in first group stage, with the top two in each group advancing into the second group stage. The 16 players in the second group stage were divided into four groups of 4, with the top 2 reaching the knock-out round.
Hossein Vafaei is an Iranian professional snooker player. He is the first professional player from Iran. His attempts to travel to the United Kingdom to qualify for the major tournaments on the snooker calendar were denied due to visa problems, but he gained a UK visa in February 2015. He won his first professional title at the 2022 Snooker Shoot Out, beating Mark Williams. He dedicated this victory to his grandmother who died a few days before the tournament.
The ACBS Asian Snooker Championship is the premier non-professional snooker tournament in Asia. The event series is sanctioned by the Asian Confederation of Billiard Sports and started from 1984. Mostly, the winner of the tournament qualifies for the next season of the Professional Snooker Tour.
The 2012 Six-red World Championship was a six-red snooker tournament held between 2 and 7 July 2012 at the Montien Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The highest break of the tournament was 75, compiled by both Judd Trump and Shaun Murphy.
The 2014 Six-red World Championship was a six-red snooker tournament held between 1 and 6 September 2014 at the Montien Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.
The 2009 IBSF World Snooker Championship for women took place from 15 to 25 November 2009 at the Hyderabad International Convention Center Hall, Hyderabad. Ng On-yee won the tournament by defeating Kathy Parashis 5–2 in the final.
Mike Russell 
Michael Kreuziger 
Devendra Joshi 
Peter Gilchrist