Joe Davis
John Higgins
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Joe Davis leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Joe Davis at #3 and John Higgins at #5.
The case for Joe Davis
Snooker's founder, first champion and first theorist. Davis co-created the World Championship in 1927 with promoter Bill Camkin, beat Tom Dennis 20-11 in the inaugural final for a purse of roughly six pounds ten shillings, and then won all fifteen stagings held up to 1946 before withdrawing permanently. He never lost a World Championship match. He was also a leading billiards professional, taking four world billiards titles between 1928 and 1932, and it was his understanding of positional play in that game that he transplanted into snooker. On 22 January 1955 at Leicester Square Hall he made the first officially ratified maximum break of 147. His instructional books taught a generation that snooker was a scoring game rather than a defensive one, establishing break-building from the black as orthodoxy. Comparisons across eras are impossible in his case: he faced a tiny professional field on slower equipment, but he invented the standards everyone since has been measured against.
The case for John Higgins
The finest all-round technician of the modern era and the most durable competitor of a remarkable generation. Higgins won world titles in 1998, 2007, 2009 and 2011 and reached eight world finals in total, including three consecutive losing finals in 2017, 2018 and 2019, two of them decided in the final frame. He has more than 30 ranking titles, three UK Championships, two Masters and nine Triple Crown titles, and has compiled more than 900 career centuries. What sets him apart is completeness: he is regarded across the tour as the best safety player of his generation while also being capable of clearing from behind under maximum pressure, most famously in the deciding frames of his later Crucible finals. Turning professional in 1992 alongside Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Williams, he was still winning ranking events past 45 and still competing at the top of the tour in his fifties.