2000 World Snooker Championship

The 2000 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2000 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 15 April and 1 May 2000 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.

Stephen Hendry was the defending champion, but he lost in the first round 7–10 against Stuart Bingham.

Mark Williams won his first World title by defeating fellow Welsh player Matthew Stevens 18–16 in the final.

Tournament summary

 * In the final qualifying round Gary Wilkinson and Jason Ferguson set the record of the longest best-of-19-frames match at 11 hours and 38 minutes.
 * The pre-tournament favourite Stephen Hendry was eliminated in the first round by Crucible debutant Stuart Bingham (10–7).
 * Despite becoming the first player to make 5 centuries in a first round match at The Crucible, and outscoring his opponent, Ronnie O'Sullivan lost 9–10 to David Gray. This record was eventually equalled in 2020 when Mark Allen also made 5 centuries in his first round match.
 * Gray lost 1–13 to Dominic Dale with a session to spare, scoring just 208 points, a record low for a best-of-25 match.
 * Swail's place in the semi-finals ended Steve Davis' run in the elite top 16 – he had been in since 1980 including holding the world number one spot from 1983 to 1990. Davis lost 11–13 to John Higgins in the second round. He later returned to the top 16 in 2003/2004.
 * Higgins made a record 485 unanswered points in his quarter-final match against Anthony Hamilton.
 * Mark Williams became only the third Welsh snooker player to win the world title, after Ray Reardon and Terry Griffiths, and the first since 1979. Trailing 7–13 against fellow countryman Matthew Stevens in the final, Williams recorded a comeback to defeat Stevens 18–16 and win the title.
 * John Newton refereed his first and only World final and retired from refereeing after the match. This was also the first ever all-Welsh World final and remains the only one to-date.

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


 * Winner: £240,000
 * Runner-up: £140,000
 * Semi-final: £70,000
 * Quarter-final: £35,000
 * Last 16: £19,000
 * Last 32: £13,000
 * Last 48: £10,000


 * Last 64: £6,325
 * Last 96: £3,850
 * Last 128: £1,050
 * Stage one highest break: £2,000
 * Stage two highest break: £20,000
 * Stage two maximum break: £147,000
 * Total: £1,460,000

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 54 centuries in the Championship. The highest breaks were 143 made by Matthew Stevens in the televised stage and Nick Dyson in the qualifying stage.


 * 143, 120, 114, 114, 112, 111, 110, 109, 108, 104, 103 – Matthew Stevens
 * 141, 141, 137, 136, 135, 129, 127, 126, 109, 108, 108, 103 – John Higgins
 * 141, 103, 102 – Joe Swail
 * 136, 123, 115, 102, 101 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
 * 133 – Drew Henry
 * 132 – Stuart Bingham
 * 126, 102 – Stephen Lee


 * 123, 112, 106, 105, 101, 101 – Mark Williams
 * 120, 119, 103, 101, 100 – Dominic Dale
 * 118, 106, 104, 101 – Ken Doherty
 * 106 – Stephen Hendry
 * 102 – John Parrott
 * 101 – Chris Small
 * 100 – Peter Ebdon

Qualifying
The qualifying matches were held between 3 January and 20 March 2000 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales.