The World Snooker Trickshot Championship was a trick shot world championship, played on Snooker tables; generally played by primarily Snooker-based players. [1] The event was played between 1991 and 2006, and was organised by Matchroom Sport. Events generally used a combination of judges scores, and audience vote to determine the winners. [2] [3] [4]
Year | Location | Winner |
---|---|---|
1991 | Stoke-on-Trent | Terry Griffiths |
1992 | Brentwood | Mike Massey |
1994 | Sun City | Steve Davis Terry Griffiths |
1995 | Sun City | Steve Davis |
1996 | Sun City | Alain Robidoux |
1997 | Dagenham | Steve Davis Dennis Taylor Mike Massey |
1998 | Antwerp | Alain Robidoux |
1999 | Paisley | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2000 | Glenrothes | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2001 | Croydon | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2002 | Glenrothes | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2003 | Sunderland | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2004 | Colwyn Bay | Bogdan Wołkowski |
2005 | Doncaster | Mike Massey |
2006 | Preston | Vincent Facquet |
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards 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 22 balls, comprising a white cue ball, 15 red balls and 6 other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a snooker cue, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each foul committed by the opposing player or team. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points, and a snooker match ends when a player wins a predetermined number of frames.
Steve Davis is an English retired professional snooker player who is currently a commentator, DJ, electronic musician and author. He dominated professional snooker in the 1980s, when he reached eight World Snooker Championship finals in nine years, won six world titles, and held the world number one ranking for seven consecutive seasons. He won 28 ranking titles during his career, placing him fifth on the all-time list, behind Ronnie O'Sullivan (41), Stephen Hendry (36), John Higgins (31), and Judd Trump (29). The first player to make an officially recognised maximum break in professional competition, at the 1982 Classic, he was also the first to earn £1 million in career prize money. He is the only snooker player to have won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, which he received in 1988.
Ronald Antonio O'Sullivan is an English professional snooker player. Widely recognised as one of the most talented and accomplished players in snooker history, he has won the World Snooker Championship seven times, a modern-era record he holds jointly with Stephen Hendry. He has also won a record eight Masters titles and a record eight UK Championship titles for a total of 23 Triple Crown titles, the most achieved by any player. He holds the record for the most ranking titles, with 41, and has held the top ranking position multiple times.
John Virgo is an English snooker commentator and former professional snooker player. Virgo won four professional titles, including the 1979 UK Championship, the 1980 Bombay International and the 1984 Premiere League. A member of the sport's elite Top 16 for seven seasons, Virgo is also a former British Open and World Championship semi-finalist and was runner-up of the 1980 Champion of Champions and the 1984 Australian Masters.
Clifford Charles Devlin Thorburn is a Canadian retired professional snooker player. Nicknamed "The Grinder" because of his slow, determined style of play, he won the World Snooker Championship in 1980, defeating Alex Higgins 18–16 in the final. He is generally recognised as the sport's first world champion from outside the United Kingdom—since Australian Horace Lindrum's 1952 title is usually disregarded—and he remains the only world champion from the Americas. He was runner-up in two other world championships, losing 21–25 to John Spencer in the 1977 final and 6–18 to Steve Davis in the 1983 final. At the 1983 tournament, Thorburn became the first player to make a maximum break in a World Championship match, achieving the feat in his second-round encounter with Terry Griffiths.
John Stephen Parrott is an English former professional snooker player and television personality. He was a familiar face on the professional snooker circuit during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and remained within the top 16 of the world rankings for fourteen consecutive seasons.
William Joseph Thorne was an English professional snooker player. He won one ranking title, the 1985 Classic. He also reached the final of the 1985 UK Championship, losing 16–14 to Steve Davis after leading 13–8. He was noted for his break-building, and was among the first players to compile 100 century breaks. He earned the nickname "Mr Maximum". After retiring as a player, Thorne became a snooker commentator, primarily for the BBC.
The Masters is a professional invitational snooker tournament. Held every year since 1975, it is the second-longest-running professional snooker tournament after the World Championship. It is one of the three Triple Crown events, along with the UK Championship and the World Championship. Although not a ranking event, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious tournaments on the World Snooker Tour. The reigning champion is Ronnie O'Sullivan, who won his eighth Masters title in 2024, defeating Ali Carter 10–7.
The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool tournament contested since 1994 between teams representing Europe and the United States. Named after American pool player Willie Mosconi, the event is comparable to the Ryder Cup in golf and the Weber Cup in bowling.
Artistic billiards is a cue sport played on a billiard table. A discipline of carom billiards, players aim to recreate a portion of 76 pre-set shots of varying difficulty against an opponent. Each of the 76 shots has a maximum point value assigned for perfect execution, ranging from a four-point maximum for lowest level difficulty shots, and climbing to an eleven-point maximum. There are a total of 500 points available to a player, representing the combined value of a perfect score on all 76 shots, although not all games are played with the full shot catalogue. The governing body of the sport is the Confédération International de Billard Artistique.
The Premier League Snooker was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament. It was held from 1987 until 2012. The tournament was played in a round-robin format over a number of weeks, normally from mid-September to early-December, around the other World Snooker events in various locations.
Daryl Peach is an English professional pool player, from Lancashire, who resides in Blackpool, England. He won the 2007 WPA World Nine-ball Championship, where he defeated the Philippines' Roberto Gomez 17–15 in the final to become the first British player to win the WPA World Nine-ball Championship.
Michael Massey, professionally known as Mike Massey, is an American professional pool player. From 1989 to 1991 he served as a contributing editor of The Snap Magazine. Massey was born in Loudon, Tennessee, and for several years lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he owned a pool hall. He has the nickname of "Tennessee Tarzan", but he now lives in Midway, Utah.
The 2003–04 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 21 August 2003 and 20 May 2004. The following table outlines the results for ranking events and the invitational events.
The 2007–08 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 16 June 2007 and 15 May 2008. This season saw the introduction of a new ranking tournament in Shanghai, while the Malta Cup lost its status as a ranking tournament.
The 1986–87 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 30 June 1986 and 30 May 1987. The following table outlines the results for the ranking and invitational events.
Dennis Taylor is a Northern Irish retired professional snooker player and current commentator. He turned professional in 1972 and is best known for winning the 1985 World Snooker Championship, in which he lost the first eight frames of the final to defending champion Steve Davis but recovered to win 18–17 in a duel on the last black ball. The final's conclusion attracted 18.5 million viewers, setting UK viewership records for any post-midnight broadcast and for any broadcast on BBC Two that still stand.
The 1987–88 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 29 June 1987 and 15 May 1988. The following table outlines the results for the ranking and invitational events.
The 2019–2020 Championship League was a professional snooker tournament, taking place over most of the 2019-20 snooker season from 7 October 2019 to 5 March 2020 at the Morningside Arena in Leicester, England. The event features seven group stages before a finals stage in March 2020; the first four played in October, two in January, and the final group played in March. It was the 13th staging of the Championship League. The event featured a total prize fund of £182,400 with the winner receiving £20,700. The losing finalist received £6,000 more than the winner due to having played in all groups starting from Group 3.
The sport of professional snooker has had a world ranking system in place since 1976. Certain tournaments were given ranking status, with the results at those events contributing to a player's world ranking. The events that made up the 1976–77 snooker season were the first to use ranking points, awarding points from earlier seasons. Originally, the world rankings were decided based only on results in the World Snooker Championship, but other events were later added. The system used for the 2020–21 snooker season was first used in the 2010–11 season, where players were awarded ranking points based entirely on prize money won from these events. The rankings are based on the prior two seasons, with ten revisions after specific tournaments throughout the season. These revisions are used as official rankings, with points awarded in the current season overwriting those from two years prior.