2010 Masters (snooker)

The 2010 Masters (officially the 2010 PokerStars.com Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 10 and 17 January 2010 at the Wembley Arena in London, England. This was the first time that the Masters was sponsored by PokerStars.com.

The final was a repeat of the previous years' final, with Mark Selby playing against the defending championship Ronnie O'Sullivan. Unlike the previous year, Selby won his 2nd Masters title by defeating O'Sullivan 10–9 in the final after trailing 4–1, 5–3 and 9–6.

Field
Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was the number 1 seed with World Champion John Higgins seeded 2. Places were allocated to the top 16 players in the world rankings. Players seeded 15 and 16 played in the wild-card round against the winner of the qualifying event, Rory McLeod (ranked 39), and wild-card selection Jimmy White (ranked 56). Rory McLeod was making his debut in the Masters following his win in the qualifying tournament; this to date is the last Masters to feature such qualifying tournament and the wildcard round in general.

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

Qualifying stage

 * Winner: £2,000
 * Runner-up: £680
 * Semi-final: £250
 * Quarter-final: £105

Televised stage

 * Winner: £150,000
 * Runner-up: £75,000
 * Semi-final: £34,000
 * Quarter-final: £16,000
 * Last 16: £14,000
 * Last 18 (wild-cards): £3,500


 * Highest break: £10,000
 * Maximum break: £25,000
 * Total: £486,000

Wild-card round
In the preliminary round the wild-card players played the 15th and 16th seeds:

Qualifying
The 2009 Masters Qualifying Event was held between 26 and 29 October 2009 at Pontins in Prestatyn, Wales. Rory McLeod earned a wild-card to the 2010 Masters, beating Andrew Higginson 6–1 in the final.

Televised stage centuries
A total of 20 century breaks were made during the event.


 * 140, 121 – Stephen Maguire
 * 140, 101 – Neil Robertson
 * 132, 107, 102 – Mark Williams
 * 129, 112, 109 – Mark Selby
 * 122, 114, 106, 106, 101 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
 * 114, 104 – Stephen Hendry
 * 114 – Mark Allen
 * 106, 100 – Shaun Murphy

Qualifying stage centuries
A total of 12 centuries were made during qualifying for the event.


 * 137 – Barry Pinches
 * 125 – Judd Trump
 * 120 – Bjorn Haneveer
 * 118 – Matthew Selt
 * 116 – Jimmy White
 * 111, 109 – Anthony Hamilton
 * 107, 100 – Jamie Burnett
 * 106 – David Gray
 * 105 – Rory McLeod
 * 100 – Robert Milkins