1998 World Snooker Championship

The 1998 World Snooker Championship was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 18 April and 4 May 1998 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.
John Higgins won his first World title by defeating defending champion Ken Doherty 18–12 in the final. Doherty became another World Champion who fell to the Crucible curse and could not defend his first World title. However, Doherty has come closer than any other first-time champion bar Joe Johnson to retaining his championship. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.

Tournament summary

Stephen Hendry lost in the first round 4–10 to Jimmy White. It was the first time since his debut in 1986 that he lost in the last 32 and it was also the first quarter-final stage not to feature Hendry since 1988.
Simon Bedford, David Gray, Quinten Hann, Matthew Stevens, Terry Murphy, Alfie Burden, Peter Lines and Jason Prince made their Crucible debuts this year. Only Stevens could advance to the second round by defeating Alain Robidoux 10–8.
Stephen Hendry's eight-year run as the world number one ended and he was replaced by John Higgins.
Prize fund

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

Winner: £220,000
Runner-up: £132,000
Semi-final: £66,000
Quarter-final: £33,000
Last 16: £17,750
Last 32: £12,000
Highest break £19,000
Maximum break £147,000
Total £1,323,000
Main draw

Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks.

Century breaks

There were 59 century breaks in the championship, a new record which would last until 2002. John Higgins' 14 centuries in the tournament was a new record, beating the 12 made by Stephen Hendry in 1995.

143, 139, 131, 130, 130, 128, 119, 118, 114, 111, 109, 104, 103, 102 John Higgins
143, 138, 118, 106 Jimmy White
141, 134, 118, 104, 100 Ronnie O'Sullivan
141 Peter Lines
140, 107 David Gray
137, 134, 131, 112 Ken Doherty
137 Dave Harold
137 James Wattana
133, 109 Stephen Lee
127, 100 Matthew Stevens
124, 117, 109, 108, 108, 104 Peter Ebdon
120, 108, 104, 102 John Parrott
115, 108, 102, 100 Anthony Hamilton
115, 105 Alfie Burden
112 Darren Morgan
111 Alan McManus
105, 100 Fergal O'Brien
103, 100 Mark King
102 Mark Williams
Qualifying

The qualifying matches were held between 2 January and March 1998 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales.

Rounds 10–11

Results for the 10th and 11th qualifying rounds are shown below.

Round 11-12

Results for the 11th and 12th rounds of qualifying are shown below.

Round 13

Results for the 13th qualifying round are shown below.

Rounds 14–15

Results for the last two rounds of qualifying are shown below.