2021 World Snooker Championship
The 2021 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 17 April to 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 45th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre and the 15th and final ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season. It was organised by the World Snooker Tour. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred and broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000 of which the winner received £500,000.
The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, who also presented the trophy (trophy presentation pictured).
Mark Joyce progressed through qualifying for the first time.
Jamie Jones qualified for the second round for the first time since completing a ban in 2018.
Jack Lisowski won his first round match 10–9 over two-time finalist Ali Carter.
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Four-time world champion Mark Selby playing at a practice table during the 2012 Masters tournament
A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game
A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks
A shot using a rest, allowing the player to reach farther down the table