What changes at the Crucible

The 2017 World Championship runs from April 15th to May 1st at the Crucible

The very next tournament in the Snooker calendar is the World Snooker Championship - with the same tables, balls and players we've seen all year, yes, but what is it that makes the Crucible so special and unique?

Well, it was 40 years ago that everything began to change. For me, the Modern Era of Snooker doesn't start before 1977, the first year when the World Championship was played at the Crucible and all the three Triple Crown events were held.
In those 4 decades of Snooker at the Crucible, we've seen young Terry Griffiths win the title on his debut (something never repeated) in 1979, Dennis Taylor win the black-ball finish in 1985, Jimmy White losing his last big chance of winning the title after missing that black against Hendry in 1994, Ronnie O`Sullivan making history with that 5:20 minutes 147 in 1997, Shaun Murphy becoming the second (and latest) qualifier to win the title in 2005, and Neil Robertson being the first Australian to win the World Title at the Crucible (first non-Brittish/Irish in 30 years) in 2010. All that of course, have always happened on the BBC screens - one of the World's biggest TV channels.

With Snooker shown live to all Europe through Eurosport and to Asia thanks to some huge local channels, tournaments in general are achieving a big global reach, but yet the World Championship have something special.
And living in Brazil I can speak properly about it. Though the World Snooker main tour is not so popular here (one thing that I'm trying hard to change), the several millions of people who like Snooker and other cue sports here will always want to know what happens at the World Championship. And it is as it should be: the World Championship must always be it's sport's most famous and rich event.

Then, what is different about it for the players? Why is the quality of play usually higher at the World Championship? Well, firstly you've got to have the guts to play at the Crucible. Snooker is a mentally draining sport, if you haven't got a proper mindset and are unable to keep hold of your emotions, it doesn't matter how good you are, you'll never achieve ultimante success in Snooker. But that just magnifies at the Crucible - it's not for the faint hearted to walk around Sheffield and see all the posters and signals about the World Championship, get to the Crucible and receive the warm reception of fans, and then still perform in an arena where the 1,000 people in the crowd are just about 6,5 feet from you.
There's also the big factor that the World Championship is the final tournament of the season, and not qualifying for it or having a disappointing result can negatively mark a season that not necessarily had been bad.
For all that, it means a lot just to play at the Crucible (a childhood dream coming true for most professionals who debut there), nevermind win a match. And it all puts a lot of pressure in the Qualifiers: To play at the World Championship you must be a top 16 player (something you must be seriously good to achieve these days as all players in the top 15 have won at least one title in the past 24 months) or come through the Qualifiers (128 players try to win 3 best of 19 matches to qualify).
Of course in these best of 19 matches, and then in even longer formats at the Crucible, you'd expect ability to come out on top and that's what provide us the best possible field for the World Championship. Yet players just outside the top 16, who have even won titles recently, can't take it for granted that they'll be at the Crucible because even though the matches are best of 19, you have to come through three of them and the standard these days is just surreal.

Okay then, we've found out what it takes from you to be a Crucible player, but what makes you a World Champion?
Apart from being psychologically strong a player won't go far unless he's extremely skilled, and I'm not saying he needs to have an all-round game (though it'll certainly help during those three-days matches), but be the best at what he does best and rely on his strengths. It's important to be consistent too, and develop a good B or even C game once you'll be at the Crucible for 17 days and you'll certainly have the odd day or two where you don't feel too good with your game. And there's also something that haven't always been noticed but we've seen it's importance in recent years: to be physically fit. Snooker isn't a sport that requires a lot physically from you, but to play more than 100 frames in 17 days (still practicing in between), after such a busy season the players have these days, it's certainly a bonus if you feed yourself properly and keep yourself fit.

Matches' length and atmosphere at the Crucible will make the true best player win most of the times, and I always say that the World Champion is unarguably the best player in the World at the time. But that doesn't mean there's no room for surprise (wasn't it only two years ago that a player who was 50/1 to win the title ended up winning it?), it happens that sometimes you have one of these days you feel like nothing's gonna go wrong and with the standard nowadays being so good anyone that may hit one of these days during the World Championship can cause a massive upset at the Crucible - and why can't that happen continuously over 17 days?



All that we can expect is a high quality tournament and though I think there are certainly some favourites of which most will do well, I'm sure that there'll be a few quite interesting stories going on at the Crucible this year like always.

Remember you can follow every piece of the World Snooker Championship 2017 through Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook.