The Snooker World Championship sees the best snooker players on the planet competing for a top prize of £500,000 – and if half a million sounds like a lot, it’s nothing compared to the global audience that the championship attracts. The televised event is watched by around half a billion viewers around the globe. Unsurprisingly, many punters like to have bet on the Snooker World Championship, and there is a range of betting markets available to snooker fans who think that they can pick a winner in this somewhat unpredictable tournament.

Snooker World Championship history

The modern game of snooker was effectively invented by a young British army officer in 1875, in the Indian town of Jabalpur, which is why India is still known as the birthplace of the game. The officer was Neville Chamberlain (not to be confused with the British Prime Minister of the same name), and he was experimenting on the billiard table in the officers’ mess when he came up with what was, in effect, a new game. Chamberlain was soon transferred to the Ootacamund hill station, where the game was developed further at the exclusive Ooty Club, with word of the new game soon spreading throughout India and the rest of the British Empire.

The game grew in popularity, and the first amateur snooker championship was staged during the First World War, though it was not until the mid-1920s that the game started to overtake the much more established, and closely related, game of billiards. By then, snooker matches in the UK had started to bring in thousands of spectators, at least partly thanks to the efforts of early professional player Joe Davis. Davis went on to win a total of 15 world titles in succession and is generally seen as a key figure in the development of the game and the main force behind the first ever professional World Snooker Championship in 1927.

The championship has been through many ups and downs, and quite a few challenges since then. It was briefly discontinued in 1957, due to a lack of interest and was then revived in 1964 by Rex Williams. In 1977, the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, UK, for the first time, and the venue has become the home of the annual tournament ever since. The event is now televised in 150 countries across the globe, and it has extensive live coverage on major networks such as BBC Sport and Eurosport.

Snooker World Championship betting tips: how to bet

You can bet on the Snooker World Championshiphere at LeoVegas, where you’ll find a large range of snooker betting markets. After registering for an online account, you can log on and see the Snooker World Championship betting odds that we’re offering for each market. Once you’ve studied the event and the odds, and decided which bets you want to place, you’ll find that placing your bet is straightforward. Just choose your bet type, enter the amount you’d like to bet, and add the bet to your online betting slip. You can make multiple bets on different markets if you want to, and you can log into your account at any time to place further bets on the Snooker World Championship or, of course, any other event you fancy having a flutter on.

Snooker World Championship format

The Snooker World Championship format has remained largely unchanged since 1982. When it comes to qualifying, the top 16 players in the world rankings will qualify for the tournament automatically, while another 16 players will earn their place at the Crucible through a qualification tournament. So, a total of 32 players will enter the first round of the championship. In the first round of the championship, matches are played in a best-of-19-frames format, which means that the first player to win 10 frames is the winner. The number of frames played then increases as the tournament goes on. The second-round matches are contested in a best-of-25-frames format, as are the quarterfinals. The semi-finals are a best of 33, and the final is a best-of-35 match.

Snooker World Championship betting: which players are taking part?

There are several key players taking part in this year’s Snooker World Championship. Let’s look at a few of them.

Key players: Ronnie O’Sullivan English snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan is one of the most talented and best-known players on the circuit. He made his first century break (so called because it involves a player scoring at least 100 points) at the tender age of 10, and at 15 he became the youngest player to achieve a maximum 147 break in an official tournament (a break in which the player pots 15 reds and 15 blacks and then all six colours). O’Sullivan turned professional in 1992, and went on to win his next 38 matches, along with his first UK Championship in 1993. At the 1997 World Championship, O’Sullivan cleared the table in five minutes and 20 seconds for the fastest recorded maximum break in history. He also set a record for maximum breaks in 2014 and one for century breaks in 2015. O’Sullivan won the Snooker World Championship in 2020 and 2022.

Key players: Judd Trump Judd Trump has long been known as a bit of a child prodigy in the world of snooker. At just 14 years of age, he became the youngest player in history to make a competitive 147 break. He joined the professional tour in 2005 and became the youngest player ever to qualify for the final stages of a ranking tournament. In 2007, he became the third youngest player ever to reach the World Championship, at the age of just 17. Trump won the Snooker World Championship in 2019 and was runner-up to Ronnie O’Sullivan in 2022.

Key players: Mark Selby Mark Selby is another UK snooker player to watch. Known as a highly accomplished break-builder with over 800 centuries, Selby won his first major tournament in 2008, taking the Masters title, which he went on to win for a second time just two years later. At the 2011 Snooker World Championship, Selby set the record for the most century breaks ever in a World Championship match, making a total of six. This was also a record for a best-of-25 match and contributed to Selby’s century tally for the season of 54, setting a record for the most centuries achieved in a season. Selby won the World Snooker Championship in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021.

Key players: Mark Allen Mark Allen is a Northern Irish snooker player with some impressive wins under his belt. Since turning professional in 2005, Allen has won the 2012 World Open, the 2018 Masters, and both the International Championship and Scottish Open in the 2018-19 season. In 2020, Allen won the non-ranking but prestigious Champion of Champions title, and in 2021, he took a home win at the Northern Ireland Open. While Allen has yet to win a World Championship, he is a player to keep on your radar when thinking about placing bets on any major snooker event.

Snooker World Championship betting markets

There are a lot of different betting markets to consider when it comes to betting on the Snooker World Championship: Match winner – Place a straightforward bet on the player you think will win a particular match. Over/under betting – In snooker, this takes the form of betting that a match will be over in a certain number of frames. Correct score – If you think that you can predict the exact score of a given match, then you could have a go at this type of bet. Frame betting – You could also have a go at predicting who will be the winner of each frame within a match.

FAQs

How to bet on the Snooker World Championship?

It’s easy to place a bet on the Snooker World Championship here at LeoVegas. Simply look at the odds and pick the bet you want to make.

Where to bet on the Snooker World Championship? You don’t have to go to a brick-and-mortar bookies to place a bet. You can do it online here at LeoVegas.