Richard Mann has three selections in his staking plan for the World Snooker Championship – check out his in-depth preview of the outright market here.
Snooker betting tips: World Championship
3pts Ronnie O'Sullivan to win the World Championship at 7/1 (General)
0.5pt e.w. Zhang Anda to win the World Championship at 50/1 (General 1/2 1,2)
0.5pt e.w. David Gilbert to win the World Championship at 100/1 (General 1/2 1,2)
Twenty world champions have returned to Sheffield 12 months on from ruling the world for the first time, and not a single one has been able to break the Crucible Curse.
Twenty.
Since 1977, when the World Championship moved to the Crucible Theatre, some of the best players in the history of the game have tried and failed, no first-time world champion able to come back the following year and win again.
Not Steve Davis, not John Higgins, not the mighty Stephen Hendry. Not even the greatest of them all, Ronnie O’Sullivan, was able to break the dreaded Curse.
Number 21 on that list is Zhao Xintong, a brilliant winner of snooker’s blue ribband last spring and hot favourite with bookmakers to defy history and add World Championship number two to the World Grand Prix, Players Championship and Tour Championship titles he has claimed since Christmas alone.
Zhao out on his own ahead of Crucible return
On everything we’ve seen in the last few months, Zhao is the best snooker player on the planet and his demolition of John Higgins and Judd Trump – number five and number two seeds in Sheffield – at the recent Tour Championship was illustration of that.
Zhao’s match-play has improved immeasurably, especially his safety play, but his real genius is that ability at will to take his game to the next level in big moments of big matches, perfectly illustrated by the burst he produced when again downing Higgins from behind in the Players Championship final.
Nobody in the game has been able to live with that version of Zhao this season, nor could Mark Williams in the final here last year. If the same Zhao turns up at the Crucible over the course of the next 17 days and is able to withstand the pressure of being defending champion, he will prove awfully hard to beat.
But trends are there for a reason and perhaps bigger than the Crucible Curse, the one that should worry backers says Tour Championship winners cannot go to the well again at the World Championship just a few weeks later and expect the same results.
Higgins failed last year, Williams checked out in the first round the year before, and so did Shaun Murphy in 2023. Neil Robertson lost in the second round in 2022.
The omens aren’t good, at the end of a long season where Zhao has done so much heavy lifting. With all that taken into consideration, I can happily look elsewhere with only scraps of 9/4 remaining.
Trump battles for his best; Selby looks strong
At the opposite end of the draw is Trump, and there are reasons to take him on, too, for all a top price of 11/2 is bigger than we could get about the world number one last year, or indeed for any other tournament this season.
I don’t subscribe to the view that this has been a poor season for Trump. He still won the German Masters and reached four more major finals, including the UK Championship, but that workload would be a concern coming here for what is known as the snooker marathon, especially when you consider he has only infrequently produced his very best form in Sheffield.
The opposite is true of Mark Selby, the man who beat Trump in that UK Championship final in the midst of a purple patch for one of the finest multi-session players snooker has ever produced. Selby was made for the Crucible and has been world champion four times already.
He has been quiet since Christmas, a worry for some, but that has been the case in the past before he’s turned it on at this tournament. A couple of more recent first-round exits would be a bigger worry and that you feel is when Selby could be vulnerable, especially having been handed a horror draw against 2024 runner-up Jak Jones who blitzed former champion Luca Brecel in qualifying on Wednesday.
Nevertheless, I’d still prefer Selby (10/1) over Trump from the bottom half of the draw, Kyren Wilson, too, who has also gone off the boil a little since winning the Masters back in January.
That might not be a bad thing for Wilson, who like this season, failed to qualify for any of the Players Series events before winning his first world title in 2024. At least this time around Wilson has that Masters win, along with an earlier victory at the Shanghai Masters, under his belt.
He’ll have his supporters priced at around 12/1 for a tournament that suits his game so well and I’m not about to argue, for all I would personally prefer Selby from the bigger hitters berthed in the bottom half.
Elsewhere, there are form concerns over Mark Allen and three-time champion Williams, though the latter is becoming increasingly hard to predict yet still very dangerous to discount in these big events.
Whether either Williams and Allen at their best can live with Zhao is up for debate, but perhaps Wilson of last season could, Trump, too, and most definitely Selby at this venue in this format.
O'Sullivan primed for more Crucible glory
But the biggest sleeping giant of all is seven-time world champion RONNIE O’SULLIVAN, lurking towards the bottom of the top half of the draw, and he heads the staking plan at 7/1.
These are words I could not have imagined writing just a few months ago, but the stars appear to be aligning for The Rocket in his bid to move to eight world titles on his own, which would leave his Triple Crown CV reading 8-8-8.
O’Sullivan was sent off a strong favourite to reach that milestone in 2024 on the back of a dominant campaign that had seen him bring up eight UK Championship and Masters wins within the space of a couple of months. To my eye, O’Sullivan simply ran out of steam in Sheffield, Stuart Bingham grinding out victory in the final session of their quarter-final.
That won’t be the case this time around, O’Sullivan having missed a host of UK events this season – including the Masters – following his decision to relocate to Dubai. That was the case last year when the now 50-year-old reached the semi-finals despite by his own admission struggling badly for form and confidence.
O’Sullivan may have in the past been guilty of running himself down, but he was adamant throughout the tournament that his game wasn’t there, and so it proved as he was beaten easily by Zhao in the last four.
It was a sad sight to see O’Sullivan so badly outgunned, the confidence in his game having ebbed away, but it speaks of his exemplary match-play and Crucible know-how that he was still able to make it that far playing levels below his best. It reminded us that at the Crucible, where O’Sullivan has so often been king, he remains a very hard man to beat with that aura he has as strong as ever.
And that point is backed up by his record here since 2020 when he was a ready winner, as he was again in 2022, before adding two more quarter-finals and last year’s last-four finish.
Gone are the days when O’Sullivan preferred the shorter shootout. Now, widely recognised as the most well-rounded snooker player to have ever played the game, O’Sullivan manages those tougher sessions so much better than he used to and is equally able to produce bursts similar to the ones Zhao has to run away with a session and put matches to bed quickly.
With no tournament win this season, nor last, there will be some punters rightly questioning whether O’Sullivan does indeed still have that change of gear up his sleeve. Wondering whether he can still go toe-to-toe with the very best and challenge for big titles like he once could.
Every single point of Ronnie O'Sullivan's RECORD-BREAKING 153! 🤯#WorldOpen pic.twitter.com/SsxtTDaylL
— WST (@WeAreWST) March 20, 2026
I firmly believe all of that remains true. Look back at the Saudi Arabia Masters in August for the first piece of evidence, O’Sullivan knocking in two 147 maximum breaks in the same match against Chris Wakelin and then only narrowly losing a high-quality final with Neil Robertson the following day.
Robertson would later admit that O’Sullivan had been ‘unlucky’ with a split on the reds which was in the end the difference between defeat and victory.
Ronnie can still steal the show
His form was patchy thereafter, but his tournament appearances were so limited that he was a professional snooker player by name only. But then, with Sheffield back on the horizon, O’Sullivan produced the highest break in snooker history, 153 against Ryan Day, on the way to reaching another final at the World Open last month. Losing to Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the final was certainly no disgrace, given the terrific standard of play both men produced in that match.
If you take those two events in isolation from the rest of the season, O’Sullivan produced snooker of real brilliance across both weeks, to levels arguably only Zhao and Selby have been able to match. And, once again, O’Sullivan’s twin maximums and record high-break have proved two of the highlights of the year.
Ahead of the World Championship, I don’t believe consistency is a concern. O’Sullivan’s poor results earlier in the season coincided with a lack of match practice, so you’d have to be encouraged to see him take part and then win the John Virgo Trophy at Goffs in Ireland just last weekend.
That to me looked an ideal tune-up for the big one, especially at his age when a bruising run at the Tour Championship, as already alluded to, may not have helped his chances in Sheffield. To cap it off by whitewashing one of the form men of the season in Higgins was particularly noteworthy.
In fact, it appeared to be vintage O’Sullivan as he peeled off breaks of 125, 75, 65, 96 and 73 in the match, with Higgins later admitting that 'Ronnie was timing it beautifully. There wasn't much I could do. He blitzed me.'
As always, O’Sullivan has been handed a tricky opener against the razor sharp and very dangerous He Guoqiang, but he’s been here many times before and should he be able work his way into the second week, he’ll quickly become one of the men to beat.
And on last weekend’s evidence, O’Sullivan would start as strong favourite should he and Higgins stick to the script and meet again in the second round. Further down the line, O’Sullivan’s recent Crucible record sits in stark contrast to possible quarter-final opponent Robertson.
All that is a long way off, but O’Sullivan stays this test so well nowadays, better than just about anyone else, and I think he’s one of few men capable of stopping Zhao should the defending champion prove himself able to maintain his own electric recent form.
At the current prices, 7/1 about O’Sullivan looks the best bet.
I do want to add two more darts to my staking plan, persuaded by recent history of this tournament which has produced deep runs for players at big prices, often battle-hardened qualifiers. Jones came through qualifying to reach the final in 2024, while few were tipping Brecel before he claimed glory a year earlier, that after he had edged out qualifier Si Jiahui in a memorable semi-final.
Jones would've likely made the staking plan had he drawn just about anyone else but Selby, so impressive was he in qualifying. But Selby is a beast here and Jones won't find much joy trying to turn this one into a war against the ultimate warrior.
Roll the dice with dangerous qualifiers
Another qualifier with Crucible pedigree is DAVID GILBERT, who came into the 2024 renewal with no form whatsoever but worked his way to the last four where he was beaten by eventual victor Wilson. The draw was kind to Gilbert that year, but he still beat Brecel before slamming the likes of Robert Milkins and Stephen Maguire.
His run ended when outgunned by a rampant Wilson, but that was Gilbert's second Crucible semi-final having played brilliantly in 2019 when numbering the likes Williams and Wilson among his victims, before losing 17-16 to Higgins in a titanic semi-final which he at one stage led 11-6.
It was a bitter pill to swallow for Gilbert, who was reduced to tears afterwards, but the fact he was able to come again five years later confirms he saves his best snooker for Sheffield, so I'd be hopeful he can step forward from comfortable wins over Leone Crowley and Aaron Hill in qualifying where he appeared to have his scoring boots on.
Gilbert could have been handed a far worse first-round draw than Ding Junhui and while the prospect of Zhao looms in round two, the Angry Farmer beat a defending champion here a couple of years ago and realistically, you can't avoid the big guns for long in Sheffield.
At 100/1, I'm happy to roll dice.
Even more impressive in qualifying was ZHANG ANDA, and he completes the staking plan at 50/1.
It must be said that Zhang's Crucible record is dreadful, but so was Brecel's prior to 2023, and the Chinese really does appear to have all the tools to do well here, boasting a strong all-round game that is built for long matches.
The 34-year-old has turned himself into a top-tier operator who qualified as a top-16 seed last year. His form coming here 12 months on would offer more encouragement, a good run to the last eight of the UK Championship topped by a runner-up finish at the World Grand Prix in February where held onto Zhao's coattails in first session of that final until the latter turned on the afterburners in the evening.
But in defeating Williams, Barry Hawkins, Wu Yize and Zhou Yuelong that week, we were reminded of what a terrific player Zhang has become, a meticulous break-builder who at his best has pinpoint cue-ball control to match anyone. It shouldn't be forgotten that Zhang has made five maximums in his career, the same number as the likes of Wilson and Robertson.
I'm not sure I'd be setting the alarm clock to watch his round-one match with Allen, the Northern Irishman openly admitting his game is a long way from where he wants it to be, but Zhang will happily get down and dirty and it's a match I think he can win if he finally produces his best at the Crucible.
From there, it could be former champion Wilson, but these are matches Zhang is no longer out of place in and he certainly has the game to produce a deep run if able to break his World Championship hoodoo. Being hot and sharp from those qualifiers is another positive for someone whose game seems to thrive on work.
At 50/1, I can't let him go unbacked.
Posted at 10:55 BST on 16/04/26
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