Snooker aficionados in the UK have descended upon Sheffield, a city in the north of England, for the 2006 Snooker World Championship.
From April the 15th until the final on May the 1st, the world’s finest snooker players are slugging it out to win the most important – and richest – snooker tournament.
The snooker World Championship first took place in 1927 and was an immediate success. In 1976 it was broadcast on television for the first time and has been held at The Crucible theatre in Sheffield ever since.
In this competition the stakes are high. The winner will walk away from the table with a prize in excess of £250,000.
There is also a cash prize for the first player to score a 147 break. This means that in one turn, or break, at the table, a player scores the maximum of 147 points. Last year Mark Williams won more than £160,000 from a single break.
Interestingly, the 147 break has only been achieved by four players since 1976. Ronnie O’Sullivan, the current world number one, is the only player to have managed the feat twice.
Nobody has won more times than the current world number two, Stephen Hendry, with seven titles. He also holds the record for the youngest winner, when he won for the first time in 1990 aged only 21.
One player hoping to break that record is 18 year-old Liang Wenbo. He recently stunned the snooker world by thrashing Nigel Bond 5-0 in the Welsh Open Championship, another important British event. He is currently ranked 86th in the world, but he is the world under-21 champion and is sure to make an impression in this year’s matches.
Another Chinese competitor to watch is Ding Junhui. He is currently number 31 in the world. He became world under-21 champion at the age of 15, and recently won the China Open, beating Hendry 9-5. He is definitely one of the most exciting young players in world snooker today, and is one to watch in April.
Despite his success, Ding remains modest. Away from snooker, his hobbies are watching Jackie Chan films and supporting Liverpool Football Club.
