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Snooker: Celebrating 40 years at the Crucible

In 2017, Snooker celebrated 40 years at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. It moved to this venue in 1997, which is now recognised at the start of the modern era of the same.

In this article, we look at some of snooker’s history, along with some of its major characters and a few of its most memorable highlights.

Background

A gentleman’s club past-time has now become a major sport, with big pockets. Snooker’s world championships celebrates its 90th anniversary this year (2017) and its 40th appearance at Sheffield’s iconic Crucible Theatre. This provides us with the opportunity to look back at an event that is not only a national institution but is now one of the major highlights of the global sporting calendar. This anniversary offers a chance to chart the sport’s intriguing evolution.

The Nomadic Existence

The tournament’s permanent move to the Crucible in 1977 marked the start of what is now seen as the modern era of the game. It also ended a nomadic period in which it had made stops at Nottingham, Chesterfield, Kettering, Blackpool, and even Jersey and South Africa.

Memorable Players

Since then, we have witnessed the creation of dominant stars: Ray Reardon in the 1970s; Steve Davis in the 1980s; Stephen Hendry in the 1990s. New icons of the game have made their names at the Crucible too. Players like two-time world champion Alex Higgins, five times winner, Ronnie O’Sullivan and the eternal runner-up Jimmy White who appeared in six finals — five of them consecutively — but was never crowned champion.

Perhaps most memorably, at the height of snooker’s popularity in 1985, the extravagantly bespectacled Northern Irishman Dennis Taylor came back from 8-0 down to win on the final black ball. You might also have caught O’Sullivan’s 5 minutes 8 seconds maximum break 20 years ago (see video below).

Prize Fund

Back in 1977, the winner got £6,000, out of a total prize fund of £17,000. In 2000 this had risen to £240,000, with a total prize fund of £1,460,000. This year the winner will walk away with £375,000, from an overall prize fund of £1,750,000.

The highest break prize is another indicator that shows the rise in the prize fund. It was £500 in 1977 and this year (2017) it will £20,000.

Just because we can, let’s take a look at the 147 break that Ronnie O’Sullivan made in the 1997 World Championship, in just 5 minutes and 8 seconds.

Qualification

Qualification to the World Championships is automatic for the top 16 ranked players, the other sixteen are decided by a qualifying tournament, which takes places in the two weeks preceding the televised tournament wild at the Crucible. This may seem a little unfair, particularly if you are ranked 17 and have to go through the qualifying stages.

Prize Pool

It is also interesting to look at the prize money won by some players who are multiple world champions. It is another way of seeing how the prize money has risen:

PlayerTimes WonYears/AmountsTOTAL
Ray Reardon61970 [£1,225], 1973 [£1,500], 1974 [£2,000], 1975 [$AUD 7,500], 1976 [£6,000], 1978 [£7,500]£22,725
Steve Davis61981 [£20,000], 1983 [£30,000], 1984 [£44,000], 1987 [£80,000], 1988 [£95,000], 1989 [£105,000]£374,000
John Higgins41998 [£220,000], 2007 [£220,000], 2009 [£250,000], 2011 [£250,000]£940,000
Stephen Hendry71990 [£120,000], 1992 [£150,000], 1993 [£175,000], 1994 [£180,000], 1995 [£190,000], 1996 [£200,000], 1999 [£230,000]£1,245,000
Ronnie O’Sullivan52001 [£260,000], 2004 [£250,000], 2008 [£250,000], 2012 [£250,000], 2013 [£250,000]£1,260,000
Prize amounts won by multiple snooker world champions

Ray Reardon and Ronnie O’Sullivan are at the start and end of the period under study. Reardon won a total of £22,725. At the time Ray Reardon won his last title, his total winnings would be worth about £120,000. Ronnie O’Sullivan, despite having one less title, won about 10 times that amount in prize money, demonstrating how the prize money has risen in real terms.

The Rise of the East

Given the prize money available, and the celebratory status that can come come with being a top snooker player, it is not surprising that the the game has become increasingly popular over the past 40 years. A lot of this is down to Barry Hearn, who revitalised the sport and has been instrumental in promoting the sport in other countries such as China and India. He recently said “China will become the snooker superpower within the next decade.“

In 1977, the last 16 players were from the following countries:

CountryNumber of Players
England8
Wales2
Northern Ireland2
Republic of Ireland1
Australia1
Canada1
South Africa1
Distribution of countries for the snooker world championship in 1977

Last year (2016) the last 32 were made up as follows:

CountryNumber of Players
England18
Scotland5
Wales3
Northern Ireland1
China3
Hong Kong1
Australia1
Distribution of countries for the snooker world championship in 2016

Snooker is still dominated by the the UK, particularly those from England, but the it can only be a matter of time before a player from the Far East wins the World Championship. China, in particular, has seen a dramatic increase the number of players, the number of tournaments that it hosts and the popularity amongst supporters.
The 16 automatic entry to the World Championship will have three Far East players; Ding Junhui — China (ranked 4), Marco Fu — Hong Kong (ranked 9) and Liang Wenbo — China (ranked 13). Perhaps, this year, will be the one where the Far East makes the big breakthrough that is surely only a matter of time and somebody from China or Hong Kong lifts the trophy on the 1st May.

Why am I interested in this?

You might ask why I am writing about snooker. It is not a game I play regularly (and badly when I do) and I have not written any scientific papers that specific topic. But, I am a big snooker fan. I enjoy watching it and following the major developments.

I also have an interest is sport, as well as casino and board board games. I have written a few scientific papers, as well as come more general articles. on these topic.

Feel free to take a look.

Journal Articles

  1. Sagir, M.; Hamid, N.H.A. and Kendall, G. 2019 A Combined Mathematical Modeling and Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach for Sports Scheduling Problems. In Journal of Industrial Engineering, 30 (2): 111-122 (more details …)
  2. Kendall, G. (2018) Did a roulette system “break the bank”. In Significance, 15 (6): 26-29 (more details …)
  3. Li, J. and Kendall, G. (2017) A hyper-heuristic methodology to generate adaptive strategies for games. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 9 (1): 1-10 (more details …)
  4. Kendall, G. and Lenten, L. J. A. (2017) When Sports Rules Go Awry. In European Journal of Operational Research, 257 (2): 377-394 (more details …)
  5. Dror, M.; Kendall, G. and Rapoport, A. (2016) Elicitation of Strategies in Four Variants of a Round-robin Tournament: The case of Goofspiel. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 8 (3): 209-217 (more details …)
  6. Li, J.; Kendall, G. and John, R. (2016) Computing Nash Equilibria and Evolutionarily Stable States of Evolutionary Games. In IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 20 (3): 460-469 (more details …)
  7. Dror, M. and Kendall, G. (2013) Repeated Goofspiel: A Game of Pure Strategy. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 5 (4): 312-324 (more details …)
  8. Li, J.; Kendall, G. and Vasilakos, A. V. (2013) Backward Induction and Repeated Games With Strategy Constraints: An Inspiration From the Surprise Exam Paradox. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 5 (3): 242-250 (more details …)
  9. Al-Khateeb, B. and Kendall, G. (2012) Introducing Individual and Social Learning Into Evolutionary Checkers. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 4 (4): 258-269 (more details …)
  10. Al-Khateeb, B. and Kendall, G. (2012) Effect of Look-Ahead Depth in Evolutionary Checkers. In Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 27 (5): 996-1006 (more details …)
  11. Kendall, G.; Knust, S.; Ribeiro, C. C. and Urrutia, S. (2010) Scheduling in sports: An annotated bibliography. In Computers & Operations Research, 37 (1): 1-19 (more details …)
  12. Li, J.; Hingston, P. and Kendall, G. (2011) Engineering Design of Strategies for Winning Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Competitions. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 3 (4): 348-360 (more details …)
  13. Kendall, G.; Parkes, A.J. and Spoerer, K. (2008) A Survey of NP-Complete Puzzles. In International Computer Games Association Journal, 31 (1): 13-34 (more details …)
  14. Lucas, S.M. and Kendall, G. (2006) Evolutionary Computation and Games (Invited Review). In IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, 1 (1): 10-18 (more details …)
  15. Kendall, G. (2008) Scheduling English football fixtures over holiday periods. In Journal of the Operational Research Society, 59 (6): 743-755 (more details …)

Conference Proceedings

  1. Babadi, A.; Omoomi, B. and Kendall, G. (2015) EnHiC: An enforced hill climbing based system for general game playing. In Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), pages 193-199 (more details …)
  2. Kendall, G. and Westphal, S. (2013) Sports Scheduling: Minimizing Travel for English Football Supporters (more details …)
  3. Hingston, P.; Congdon, C.B. and Kendall, G. (2013) Mobile Games with Intelligence: a Killer Application? In Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Games (CIG), pages 438-444 (more details …)
  4. Moody, D.; Kendall, G. and Bar-Noy, A. (2010) Youth Sports Leagues Scheduling. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2010), pages 283-293, 11-13 August 2010, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK (more details …)
  5. Bell, N.; Fang, X.; Hughes, R.; Kendall, G.; O’Reilly, E. et al. (2010) Ghost direction detection and other innovations for Ms. Pac-Man. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG’10), pages 465-472 (more details …)
  6. While, L. and Kendall, G. (2014) Scheduling the English Football League with a Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN 2014), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 8672, pages 842-851, Slovenia (more details …)
  7. Gibbs, J.; Kendall, G. and Özcan, E. (2011) Scheduling English Football Fixtures over the Holiday Period Using Hyper-heuristics. In Proceedings of Problem Parallel Solving from Nature (PPSN XI), Sep 2010, pages 496-505, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6238 (more details …)
  8. Kendall, G.; McCollum, B.; Cruz, F. R. B. and McMullan, P. (2010)  Scheduling English Football Fixtures: Consideration of Two Conflicting Objectives. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2010), pages 1-15, 11-13 August 2010, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK (more details …)
  9. Al-Khateeb, B. and Kendall, G. (2009) Introducing a round robin tournament into Blondie24. In Proceedings of Computational Intelligence and Games, 2009 (CIG 2009), pages 112-116 (more details …)
  10. Hamid, N. A. and Kendall, G. (2008) Maximising Stadium Attendance: A Case Study of Malaysian Football. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2008), 18-22 August 2008, Montreal, Canada (more details …)
  11. Kendall, G.; While, L.; McCollum, B. and Cruz, F. R. B. (2008) A Multiobjective Approach for UK Football Scheduling. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT 2008), 18-22 August 2008, Montreal, Canada (more details …)
  12. Nasreddine, H.; Poh, H.S. and Kendall, G. (2006) Using an Evolutionary Algorithm for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function Based on a Dynamic Boundary Strategy. In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems (CIS 2006), pages 1-6 (more details …)
  13. Hingston, P. and Kendall, G. Ant Colonies Discover Knight’s Tours. In Proceedings of Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 17th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI’04), pages 1213-1218, Cairns, Australia, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3339 (more details …)
  14. Hingston, P. and Kendall, G. Enumerating knight’s tours using an ant colony algorithm. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pages 1003-1010 (more details …)
  15. Kendall, G. and Shaw, S. (2002) Investigation of an Adaptive Cribbage Player. In Proceedings of the Computers and Games Third International Conference (CG 2002), pages 29-41, Springer, Edmonton, Canada, Jul 24-27, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2883 (more details …)
  16. Kendall, G. and Willdig, M. (2001) An Investigation of an Adaptive Poker player. In Proceedings of the 14th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI’01), pages 217-229, Springer-Verlag, Adelaide, Australia, 10-14 December, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2256 (more details …)
  17. Kendall, G. and Whitwell, G. An Evolutionary Approach for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function using Population Dynamics. In Proceedings of the 2001 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2001), pages 995-1002, IEEE Press, 27-29 May, COEX Center, Seoul, Korea (more details …)

Book Chapters

Conversation Articles

  1. Kendall G. (2018) How to cheat at dice from an expert in games. The Conversation, 23 July 2018 (more details …)
  2. Kendall G. (2018) A guide to poker scams – how not to get stung. The Conversation, 11 April 2018 (more details …)
  3. Kendall G (2018). How to avoid a sucker bet – with a little help from maths. The Conversation, 17 January 2018 (more details …)
  4. Kendall G. (2017) Here’s the best way to shuffle a pack of cards – with a little help from some maths. The Conversation, 23 February 2017 (more details …)
  5. Kendall G. (2016) Can maths help you win at roulette? The Conversation, 30 November 2016 (more details …)
  6. Kendall G. (2016) How Isaac Newton could help you beat the casino at roulette. The Conversation, 23 August 2016 (more details …)
  7. Kendall G. (2016) How to beat the casino – legally. The Conversation, 10 May 2016 (more details …)
  8. Kendall G. (2016) Is the sporting world putting money before fairness? The Conversation, 19 April 2016 (more details …)
  9. Kendall G. (2016) Why the dartboard looks like it does, and how bad players can do better. The Conversation, 8 January 2016 (more details …)
  10. Kendall G. (2014) Explainer: how are football fixtures set? The Conversation, 12 Aug 2014 (more details …)
  11. Kendall G. (2014) How to get ants to solve a chess problem. The Conversation, 30 January 2014 (more details …)
  12. Kendall G. (2014) How to teach Deep Blue to play poker and deliver groceries. The Conversation, 9 January 2014 (more details …)
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