2011 World Snooker Championship


The 2011 World Snooker Championship was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 16 April and 2 May 2011 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 35th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible and was the last ranking event of the 2010/2011 season. The event was organised by the WPBSA and had a prize fund of £1,111,000. The tournament was sponsored by Betfred.com.
Neil Robertson was the defending champion, but lost 8–10 against Judd Trump in the first round. Trump became the youngest player since 1990 to reach the final where he lost to John Higgins. This was Higgins' fourth world title, becoming only the fourth man to win four or more championships. Ding Junhui meanwhile became the first player from China to reach the semi-finals. Mark King and Ding Junhui made the highest breaks at the Crucible with 138; while James Wattana compiled the highest break of the tournament during qualifying with 141.
An audience of 3.93 million viewers watched the final session in Great Britain with 2.03 million watching the third session of the final. The second and fourth sessions of the final was the most watched programme on BBC Two for their particular weeks. Viewing figures on the BBC peaked at 6.6 million viewers. The figure of 3.9 million who watched the final session was up 50% on the year before. It was estimated that nearly half of the UK population watched the tournament at some point. In China, Ding Junhui's semi-final had an average watch of 19.4 million with a peak audience of 30 million over seven television networks. A record number of fans bought tickets, with the last four days and other sessions sold out with sales up 15% on 2010.

Tournament summary

First round

In an effort of World Snooker to cut costs there was no separate prize money for a maximum break. In previous years the prize money for this achievement was £147,000. For the 2011 tournament there was a £1,111,000 prize fund with the winner receiving £250,000. The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:
Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks. The draw for the first round took place on 21 March 2011, one day after the Players Tour Championship Finals.

Preliminary qualifying

The preliminary qualifying rounds for the tournament took place on 3 March 2011 at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield.
Round 1
Round 2

Qualifying

The qualifying rounds 1–4 for the tournament took place between 4 and 10 March 2011 at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield. The final round of qualifying took place between 12 and 13 March 2011 at the same venue.
Round 1
Rounds 2–5

Century breaks

Televised stage centuries

There were 74 century breaks in the televised stage of the World Championship.
There were 73 century breaks in the qualifying stage of the World Championship.