1999 World Snooker Championship

The 1999 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1999 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 17 April and 3 May 1999 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.

John Higgins was the defending champion, but he lost in the semi-finals 10–17 against Mark Williams and became another World Champion who fell to the "Crucible curse" and could not defend his first World title.

Stephen Hendry won his seventh and final World title by defeating Mark Williams in the final by 18 frames to 11. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.

Tournament summary

 * Stephen Hendry won the world title for a seventh time, a record in the modern era, beating Ray Reardon and Steve Davis' six titles. Hendry won all his titles in the 1990s while Davis won his six in the 1980s and Reardon won his in the 1970s.
 * During his first round match, Steve James compiled the 500th century break at the Crucible in frame seven.
 * Ronnie O'Sullivan came close to a maximum break in his semi-final match with Hendry. He missed the last pink to the middle pocket and his break ended at 134.
 * O'Sullivan and Hendry made the most century breaks in a single match at the World Championship with eight. The two players also made 4 centuries in 4 frames, with two tons each, the first time this has happened in any ranking event.
 * Dominic Dale scored 167 points in one frame in his match against Nigel Bond. He earned 44 penalty points and then made a century break, setting a record for the highest number of points scored in one frame during professional competition. Dale's record stood for over 22 years until Jimmy Robertson scored 178 points in a single frame at the 2021 Scottish Open.

Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:


 * Winner: £230,000
 * Runner-up: £135,000
 * Semi-final: £68,000
 * Quarter-final: £34,000
 * Last 16: £18,350
 * Last 32: £12,500
 * Last 48: £9,250
 * Last 64: £6,000


 * Last 96: £3,700
 * Last 134: £300
 * Stage one highest break : £2,000
 * Stage two highest break : £20,000
 * Stage two maximum break: £147,000
 * Total: £1,400,000

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).

Century breaks
There were 53 century breaks in the championship. The highest break was 142 made by John Higgins and 143 made by both Stephen Maguire and Barry Pinches at the televised and the qualifying stages respectively.


 * 142, 132, 127, 126, 124, 108, 104, 104, 100 – John Higgins
 * 140, 123, 109, 104, 101, 100 – Mark Williams
 * 137, 108 – Tony Drago
 * 137 – Steve James
 * 136, 130, 110 – James Wattana
 * 135, 134, 122, 120, 110, 105, 100 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
 * 133 – John Parrott
 * 132, 126, 109, 108, 106, 104, 104, 101 – Stephen Hendry


 * 131, 114 – Chris Small
 * 128, 110, 104 – Stephen Lee
 * 124, 120, 100 – Matthew Stevens
 * 122 – Dominic Dale
 * 120, 109 – Joe Perry
 * 108, 103 – Anthony Hamilton
 * 104 – Ken Doherty
 * 103, 103 – Mark King

Qualifying
The qualifying matches were held between 3 January and 20 March 1999 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales.