The 2011 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2011 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) 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 Cruicble 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.
Debutants at the Crucible were Andrew Pagett and Jimmy Robertson. This was also the first time that they qualified for the main draw of a ranking tournament. Neither of them reached the second round, as Pagett lost 7–10 against Jamie Cope and Robertson lost 1–10 against Mark Selby.
Defending champion Neil Robertson lost 8–10 against Judd Trump. Robertson fell to the Crucible Curse, as he became another first-time champion who could not defend his title.
Barry Hawkins and Rory McLeod reached the second round of the World Championship for the first time in their career. Hawkins defeated Stephen Maguire 10–9 and McLeod defeated Ricky Walden 10–6.
Ronnie O'Sullivan compiled his 100th Crucible century break in his first round match against Dominic Dale. O'Sullivan won the match 10–2. O'Sullivan attempted to withdraw from the World Championship one week before it started, but later, when asked for a written confirmation, changed his decision.
Five out of the sixteen seeded players lost their first round matches: Neil Robertson, Stephen Maguire, Ricky Walden, Marco Fu and Peter Ebdon. Fu lost 8–10 against Martin Gould and Ebdon lost 8–10 against Stuart Bingham.
Mark Selby made three records in his 13–4 victory over Stephen Hendry. Selby became the first snooker player to compile six century breaks at a World Championship match in the Crucible. This was also a record for a best of 25 frame match and took the number of Selby's century breaks in the season to 54, a record previously held by Hendry.
Ding Junhui came back from 9–12 to defeat Stuart Bingham 13–12. Ding qualified for the quarter-finals of the World Championship for the first time in his career.
Mark Williams defeated Mark Allen 13–5 to reach the semi-finals of the World Championship for the first time since 2003, when he won his second world title.
Judd Trump, rated an 80–1 outsider at the beginning of the tournament, defeated previous year's runner up Graeme Dott 13–5 to reach the semi-finals.
Ding Junhui won his match 13–10 against Mark Selby to become the third player from Asia and the first from China to reach the semi-finals of the World Championship. As a result of Selby's exit from the tournament Williams became the new world number one after the event.
Judd Trump defeated Ding Junhui 17–15 in an absorbing match to become the second youngest player, after Stephen Hendry in 1990, to reach the final of the World Championship. Trump also reached his second consecutive ranking final after winning the China Open at the start of the month. In China, the second session of the match drew a peak audience of nearly 30 million viewers and averaging over 19 million, with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association claiming it was the highest rated sports programme of 2011 up to that point; however, the Women's Tennis Association claimed that the women's singles final of the Australian Open held earlier in the year drew an audience of 60 million viewers on Chinese television.
Mark Williams won the first session 5–3, and could maintain his advantage after the second session, which ended 4–4. John Higgins then won six of the next eight frames, to lead 13–11. Higgins won the match 17–14 to reach his third final in five years. During the 28th frame Higgins was heckled by a member of the audience, "How did you swallow that £300,000, John? ... You're a disgrace to snooker." in reference to the News of the World allegations the previous year, for which the heckler was later ejected from the venue.
Ted Lowe, BBC commentator for many years and the deviser of the long-running snooker programme Pot Black, died at the age of 90 on the morning of 1 May. Before the start of the final that day, a minute's applause in honour of Lowe took place.
The referee of the final was Jan Verhaas, who refereed his fourth World Championship final.
There was a small format change with sessions of 8, 9, 8 and 10 frames rather than 8, 8, 8 and 11.
After the first session was tied at four frames all, Trump won the second session 6–3 to take a 10–7 lead into the second day's play. Higgins took a 13–12 lead after the third session of the final, which he won 6–2. The score levelled at fourteen frames all, but Higgins won four of the last five frames to win the match 18–15. Higgins won his 24th ranking title and became only the fourth player to win the World Championship four times in the modern era after Ray Reardon, Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry.
The highest break of the tournament was 138 made by both Mark King and Ding Junhui. This was the first time that the highest break of the tournament was lower than 140 since 1987, when it was 127 made by Steve Davis.
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:
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). The draw for the first round took place on 21 March 2011, one day after the Players Tour Championship Finals.
The preliminary qualifying rounds for the tournament took place on 3 March 2011 at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield. (WPBSA members not on The Tour.)
Round 1
Round 2
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
There were 73 century breaks in the qualifying stage of the World Championship.
There were 74 century breaks in the televised stage of the World Championship.
