1993 World Snooker Championship

The World Snooker Championship is an annual professional snooker tournament organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). Founded in the late 19th century by British Army soldiers stationed in India, the cue sport was popular in the British Isles. However, in the modern era, which started in 1969 when the World Championship reverted to a knockout format, it has become increasingly popular worldwide, especially in East and Southeast Asian nations such as China, Hong Kong and Thailand. Joe Davis won the first World Championship in 1927, hosted by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the final match being held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England. The 1993 championship featured 32 professional players competing in one-on-one snooker matches in a single-elimination format, each round being played over a pre-determined number of , and each match divided into two or more s containing a set number of frames. These competitors in the main tournament were selected using a combination of the top players in the snooker world rankings and the winners of a pre-tournament qualification stage. It was the seventeenth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible, the first tournament there having taken place in 1977. The defending champion in 1993 was Stephen Hendry, who had defeated Jimmy White 18–14 in the final of the 1992 World Snooker Championship. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette brand Embassy, and was also referred to as the Embassy World Snooker Championship. The championship was broadcast on BBC Television in the UK. • Winner: £175,000 • Runner-up: £105,000 • Semi-final: £52,000 • Quarter-final: £26,000 • Last 16: £14,000 • Last 32: £8,000 • Highest break: £14,400 • Maximum break: £100,000 • Total: £1,000,000 ==Tournament summary==

First round The first round took place between 17 and 22 April, each match played over two sessions as the best of 19 frames. Eight players made their debut at the main stage of the world championship: of these, three first-season professionals, John Giles, Spencer Dunn and Ronnie O'Sullivan, had progressed through 11 rounds to reach the last 32. O'Sullivan was the youngest player ever to qualify for World Championship main stage. He became the second-youngest player to compete at the main stage, at 17 years and 5 months old, two months older than Stephen Hendry had been at his debut in 1986. Snooker historian Clive Everton attributed the high number of debutants to the governing body's decision to hold pre-qualifying at the beginning of the season. According to Everton, "This had created the situation whereby relatively inexperienced players could become match hardened in the summer qualifying school and then catch cold many established players just outside the top 16 in the rankings, which would have exempted them from the qualifying competition." In frame three of his first-round match against Danny Fowler, Hendry compiled the 250th century break at the Crucible. Three frames later, he made a 128 break, the 200th century break of his career. Fowler won only the tenth frame; Hendry won 10–1. O'Sullivan lost 7–10 against Alan McManus. Everton felt that O'Sullivan had been affected by the pressure, and that his "Brilliant pots were negated by unforced errors". Second round The second round, which took place between 22 and 26 April, was played as best-of-25-frames matches spread over three sessions. Davis made the highest break of the tournament, and the fourth-highest in championship history, with a 144 in the third frame against McManus. Despite this, he trailed 1–4 before levelling at 4–4. McManus eventually won 13–11. Quarter-finals The quarter-finals were played as best-of-25-frames matches over three sessions on 27 and 28 April. Hendry led Bond 6–2 after one session. He was tied 5–5 with Parrott but then took six consecutive frames and went on to win 13–6. Semi-finals The semi-finals took place between 29 April and 1 May as best-of-31-frames matches played over four sessions. McManus was 0–3 down to Hendry, but took the next four frames; their first session finished with them at 4–4. After losing 9–16, Wattana remarked that his concentration had been "very much on and off" during the match. A 123 in the ninth frame was Hendry's eighth century break of the tournament, equalling the record held by Davis and Parrott. Snooker historian Clive Everton wrote that Hendry "dominated the championship so thoroughly that it was easy to forget the inconsistency which had plagued him for most of the season." White wrote in his autobiography Second Wind that he had low expectations coming into the championship, as he was separated from his wife Maureen and had "spent months on the piss and coke, running around like a madman, and generally just forgetting about snooker." He added that he felt he "fell over the line" in each match on the way to the final, and that in the final was "out-played and outclassed by the best player in the world." In Hendry's autobiography Me and the Table, he wrote that he was confident of victory going into the tournament "I don’t take winning for granted, yet I knew I was going to win this, and maybe I don’t feel it’s that big a deal." == Main draw ==

Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers). ==Qualifying==

Results for the qualifying competition are shown below. Rounds 1 and 2 Rounds 3 to 5 Rounds 6 to 7 Rounds 8 and 9 Rounds 10 to 11 == Century breaks ==

There were 35 century breaks in the championship, a new record, beating the 31 centuries of the 1991 edition. The highest break of the event was a 144 made by Steve Davis. • 144 Steve Davis • 139, 122, 101 Nigel Bond • 138, 106 Steve James • 136, 129, 128, 126, 124, 123, 113, 110 Stephen Hendry • 133 Terry Griffiths • 124, 108, 100, 100 Neal Foulds • 122, 102 John Parrott • 121 Martin Clark • 112 Alan McManus • 110, 104, 104, 103 James Wattana • 108, 105, 104 Jimmy White • 108, 104 Willie Thorne • 105 Peter Ebdon • 104, 101 Gary Wilkinson ==Notes==