1928 World Snooker Championship

The 1928 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament held at various venues from 28 December 1927 to 17 May 1928. It was the second staging of the World Snooker Championship. It was played on a challenge basis with the other six entrants playing off for the right to challenge defending champion Joe Davis in the final. The final was held at the Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England, with three of the other matches contested there, and one each played in Leamington Spa and Nottingham.

Davis won 16–13 in the final against Fred Lawrence, and retained the title. Davis had won the professional billiards championship earlier in May, and became the first person to hold the professional titles in billiards and snooker titles concurrently, and then the first person to win them both in the same season. The highest break of the snooker tournament was 46, compiled by Alec Mann in the third frame of his first round match against Albert Cope.

Background

Professional English billiards player and billiard hall manager Joe Davis had noticed the increasing popularity of snooker compared to billiards in the 1920s, and with Birmingham-based billiard hall manager Bill Camkin, who had also seen snooker's increasing appeal, persuaded the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC) to recognise an official professional snooker championship in the 1926–27 season. The inaugural event was won by Davis, who defeated Tom Dennis 20–11 in the final. Originally called the Professional Championship of Snooker, the annual competition was not titled the World Championship until 1935, but the 1927 tournament is now referred to as the first World Snooker Championship.