Mark Selby
Neil Robertson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mark Selby leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mark Selby at #7 and Neil Robertson at #10.
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 Neil Robertson
The most successful player produced outside Britain and Ireland, and for a long stretch the only one. Robertson won the World Championship in 2010, becoming the first Australian champion and the only player from outside the British Isles to take the title between Cliff Thorburn in 1980 and Luca Brecel in 2023. He has more than 24 ranking titles and five Triple Crown titles, including three UK Championships (2013, 2015, 2020) and the 2012 Masters, and has compiled over 800 career centuries. In 2013-14 he became the first player in history to make 100 century breaks in a single season, finishing with 103, a benchmark that has since become the marker of an elite scoring campaign. Left-handed and technically orthodox, he built his career by moving to Britain as a teenager after failing to make an impact from Melbourne, and remains the proof that the tour's talent pipeline is not geographically fixed.