Steve Davis
Neil Robertson
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 Neil Robertson at #10.
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 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.