Stephen Hendry
Mark Selby
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Stephen Hendry leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Stephen Hendry at #2 and Mark Selby at #7.
The case for Stephen Hendry
The most dominant player of snooker's modern peak and the man who redefined how fast a frame should be won. Hendry took the world title in 1990 at 21 years and 106 days, still the youngest champion, and added six more (1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999), including five in a row from 1992 to 1996 — a run no one else has approached in the Crucible era. He finished with 36 ranking titles, five UK Championships, six Masters and 18 Triple Crown titles, and held the world number one ranking for eight consecutive seasons from 1990 to 1998. He retired in 2012 with 775 career centuries and 11 official maximums, the last of them made at the Crucible in his final World Championship appearance. His contribution was tactical as much as statistical: by attacking long reds that his contemporaries played safe on, he forced the entire tour to raise its scoring rate.
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.