Mark Selby
Ding Junhui
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mark Selby leads 5 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mark Selby at #7 and Ding Junhui at #12.
Head-to-head FAQ
Who leads more shared metrics?
How do the published ranks compare?
Are these live stats?
The case for Mark Selby
The hardest man in modern snooker to beat over a long match. Selby has four world titles (2014, 2016, 2017, 2021) from six finals, more than 20 ranking titles, and eight Triple Crown titles including the 2012 UK Championship and three Masters (2008, 2010, 2013). He has passed 800 career centuries. His reputation rests on attrition: a safety game good enough to strangle opponents for whole sessions, an unusual willingness to play a frame out over an hour, and a recovery rate from behind that has produced repeated Crucible comebacks, most notably from 10-4 down to beat Ronnie O'Sullivan in the 2014 final. The caricature of him as purely defensive is unfair — in the 2023 world final against Luca Brecel he made the first maximum break ever compiled in a World Championship final. Known as the Jester from Leicester, he has spent long spells as world number one across three separate periods.
The case for Ding Junhui
The most successful Asian player in the sport's history and the single figure most responsible for its expansion into China. Ding won the 2005 China Open in Beijing at 18, beating Stephen Hendry 9-5 in front of an enormous home audience, and has since taken more than 14 ranking titles, more than any other player from Asia. His Triple Crown record stands at four: three UK Championships (2005, 2009, 2019) and the 2011 Masters. In 2013-14 he won five ranking events in a single season, equalling Hendry's record for a campaign. He reached the 2016 world final, the first Asian player to do so, losing 18-14 to Mark Selby, and has passed 500 career centuries. The absence of a world title is the gap in his case, but the academies, sponsorships and junior pathways that produced Zhao Xintong's 2025 championship were built on the interest Ding created twenty years earlier.