World Snooker Championship

The World Snooker Championship is the most prestigious tournament in professional snooker and, with the UK Championship and the invitational Masters, one of the three events of snooker's Triple Crown Series. It was first held in 1927 as a professional competition organised by the Billiards Association and Control Council, and Joe Davis won the title and went on to take the first fifteen championships. A rival event ran in the 1950s during a dispute between the sport's two professional bodies, and from 1964 to 1968 the title was decided on a challenge basis before returning to a knockout in 1969. Every edition since 1977 has been staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The main tournament is a thirty two player single elimination knockout over seventeen days ending in early May, the top sixteen in the world rankings qualifying automatically and sixteen more coming through a qualifying event. Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O'Sullivan share the modern era record of seven titles.