Born | Leicester, England | 19 June 1983
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Sport country | England |
Nickname | The Jester from Leicester[1] |
Professional | 1999–present |
Highest ranking | 1 (Sep 2011–Nov 2012; Dec 2012–Feb 2013; Apr–Jun 2013; May–Jul 2014; Aug–Dec 2014; Feb 2015–Mar 2019; Aug–Oct 2021; Nov 2021–Apr 2022) |
Current ranking | 4 (as of 11 November 2024) |
Maximum breaks | 5 |
Century breaks | 848 (as of 16 November 2024) |
Tournament wins | |
Ranking | 23 |
Minor-ranking | 7 |
World Champion |
Mark Anthony Selby MBE (born 19 June 1983) is an English professional snooker player. Considered one of the greatest players of all time [2] [3], he has been ranked world number one on multiple occasions. He has won a total of 23 ranking titles, placing him eighth on the all-time list of ranking tournament winners. He is a four-time World Snooker Champion, and has won the Masters three times and the UK Championship twice for a total of nine Triple Crown titles, putting him on a par with John Higgins, and behind only Ronnie O’Sullivan (23), Stephen Hendry (18) and Steve Davis (15).
After winning the England Under-15 Championship in 1998, Selby turned professional in 1999, aged 16. He made his Crucible debut in 2005, and reached his first World Championship final in 2007, when he was runner-up to John Higgins. He won his first major title at the 2008 Masters, and his first ranking title at the 2008 Welsh Open. Between 2014 and 2017, he won the World Championship three times in four years. He first became world number one in September 2011, and held onto the top ranking position for just over four years between February 2015 and March 2019. He has compiled more than 800 century breaks in professional competition, including five maximum breaks, one of which is the only one to have been made during the final of the World Championships.
Selby is also a pool player; he was the 2006 World Eight-ball Pool Federation champion, and the runner-up at the Chinese Eight-ball World Championship in 2015, making him the only man to have been world champion in both snooker and pool.