Steve Davis
Ding Junhui
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Steve Davis leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Steve Davis at #4 and Ding Junhui at #12.
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The case for Steve Davis
The player who made snooker a mainstream British obsession and the most complete tactician the sport has produced. Davis won six world titles (1981, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1989) from eight finals, took 28 ranking titles, and spent seven consecutive seasons as world number one through the 1980s. With six UK Championships and three Masters he finished on 15 Triple Crown titles. In 1982 he made the first maximum break shown on television, a 147 against John Spencer at the Lada Classic in Oldham. His game was built on percentages: safety of a quality no one could match, positional play that rationed opponents to a handful of chances, and an absence of unforced error that opponents found demoralising. He was also central to the sport's two most famous defeats, losing the 1985 final 18-17 on the last black to Dennis Taylor before an estimated 18.5 million British viewers, and losing to 150-1 outsider Joe Johnson in 1986.
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.