2010 World Snooker Championship

The 2010 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2010 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 17 April and 3 May 2010 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The final ranking event of the 2009–10 snooker season, it was the 34th year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible. The event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association and had a total prize fund of £1,111,000, with £250,000 going to the winner of the event. The tournament was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred.

John Higgins was the defending champion, but lost in the second round 11–13 to Steve Davis. Neil Robertson won the event after a 18–13 win over Graeme Dott in the final. In winning the event, Robertson was the second player from outside of the British Isles to win the event in the modern era of snooker, and the first Australian to win the event since the disputed 1952 World Snooker Championship which contained only Australian and New Zealand players. There were 60 century breaks made during the event, the highest being a 146 made by both Dott and Mark Allen.

The inaugural 1927 World Snooker Championship, then known as the Professional Championship of Snooker, took place at various venues in England between November 1926 and May 1927. Joe Davis won the final—held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham from 9 to 12 May 1927—and went on to win the tournament 15 consecutive times before retiring undefeated after the 1946 edition (no tournaments were held from 1941 to 1945 because of World War II). The tournament went into abeyance after only two players contested the 1952 edition, due to a dispute between the Professional Billiards Players' Association (PBPA) and the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC). The PBPA established an alternative tournament, the World Professional Match-play Championship, of which the six editions held between 1952 and 1957 are retroactively regarded as legitimate continuations of the World Snooker Championship. However, due to waning public interest in snooker during the post-war era, that tournament was also discontinued, and the world title was uncontested between 1958 and 1963.

Then-professional player Rex Williams was instrumental in reviving the World Snooker Championship on a challenge basis in 1964. John Pulman, winner of the 1957 World Professional Match-play Championship, defended the world title across seven challenge matches between 1964 and 1968. The World Snooker Championship reverted to an annual knockout tournament for the 1969 edition, marking the beginning of the championship's "modern era". The 1977 edition was the first staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where it has remained since. The most successful players in the modern era was Stephen Hendry, having won the title seven times. Hendry was also the tournament's youngest winner, having captured his first title at the 1990 event, aged 21 years and 106 days. Ray Reardon became the oldest winner when he secured his sixth title at the 1978 event, aged 45 years and 203 days.

The 2010 event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. John Higgins was the defending champion, having defeated Shaun Murphy 18–9 in the previous year's final. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, who extended their sponsorship of the event for a further four years.

The 2010 World Snooker Championship took place from 17 April to 3 May 2010 in Sheffield, England. The tournament was the last of six ranking events in the 2009–10 snooker season on the World Snooker Tour. It featured a 32-player main draw that was held at the Crucible Theatre, as well as a qualifying draw that was played at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield from 26 February to 9 March. This was the 34th consecutive year that the tournament had been staged at the Crucible. The main stages of the event were broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom.

The top 16 players in the latest world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Higgins was seeded first overall as the defending champion, and the remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on the latest world rankings. The number of frames required to win a match increased throughout the tournament. The first round consisted of best-of-19-frames matches, with the final match being played over a maximum of 35 frames. All 16 non-seeded spots in the main draw were filled with players from the qualifying rounds. The draw for the televised stage of the World Championship was made on 11 March 2010.

The breakdown of prize money for the event is shown below: