Bedford's best performance in a professional ranking event was to qualify for the
1998 World Championship; he beat
Gary Wilkinson 10–9, before losing 6–10 to
Steve Davis. He also reached the last 32 of the
European Open in
2004 and the
Grand Prix in 2008, beating two-time World Champion
Mark Williams en route. He qualified to return to the Main Tour for the
2008–09 season by finishing fourth in the 2007/2008
Pontins International Open Series rankings. In the
2012–13 season, he became the only player to beat World Champion
Ronnie O'Sullivan, after a 4–3 win from 2–3 behind in the first main round of the
third UK event of the
Players Tour Championship in September. At the beginning of the
2013–14 season, in qualifying against
Barry Pinches for the
2013 Australian Goldfields Open, a 19-year-old record from the qualifying stage of the
1994 British Open was broken. The match lasted 449 minutes and 46 seconds, the longest ever best-of-nine-frame match in the
history of professional snooker. The previous record was 434 minutes and 12 seconds in the match between
Ian Williamson and
Robby Foldvari in 1994. The Bedford/Pinches match began on 31 May 2013 and ended on 1 June 2013; Bedford won 5–4, after being 4–0 up. He only entered six further events during the season, winning five matches. After a first round defeat in the
UK Championship in November he did not enter another tournament, resulting in his relegation from the main tour as he ended the season ranked 99th in the world. Bedford returned to play in 2017 Q School and was knocked out in the fifth round of the first event and the second round of event two. ==Performance and rankings timeline==