Mark Allen: Who Is Snooker’s No. 1?

World rankings in some sports are definitely more accurate than others. The FIFA football rankings may have shown Belgium as the best team in the world for much of the time between November 2015 and the end of 2021, but few experts really thought they were. On the other hand, the golf world rankings tend to be a very good reflection of who is the best in the world at a given time and it is impossible to make it to the top without a sustained spell of truly high-class golf.

When it comes to snooker, things are probably somewhere in the middle, though they have rather changed due to the way the structure of the modern tour has been altered. Until relatively recently there were very few tournaments contested and all of the best players tended to feature in almost all of them – certainly all of the biggest. Under those circumstances, the number one in the world was usually widely accepted as being the game’s finest exponent.

Dominant Snooker Players Over the Years

This was also partly the case because over the years there has so often been a dominant figure in the game. From the 1980s we had Steve Davis, then Stephen Hendry came along, then we had an era where Ronnie O’Sullivan fought with the likes of Mark Williams and John Higgins, before striking out as the clear number one.

That is somewhat different now and whilst the Rocket is still (on his day) the man to beat, things look far more open than they have for many, many years, at the top of the game. The current world number one is Mark Allen, a 38-year-old from Northern Ireland who for much of his career has been considered to be something of a journeyman.

That might be a little harsh on the Pistol, given he has been a top-16 player for more than 15 years. However, he has never won the World Championship. Moreover, he has only won the UK Championship on one occasion and The Masters once as well. The casual snooker fan may barely have heard of him and he certainly isn’t the sort of player known beyond the sport. Whether you are a hardcore lover of the game, the sort of snooker fan who only tunes in for the biggest events, or someone new to the game, let’s take a look at the world number one!

Who Is Mark Allen?

Allen was born in February 1986, in Antrim, Northern Ireland. He won the World Amateur Championship in 2004 and moved into the pro ranks in 2005. He settled quickly, making it into the top 30 in the world in the 2007/08 season and the elite-level top 16 the season after that; he’s stayed there ever since.

He has spent most of the time ranked somewhere around 10th in the world – generally a few places higher or a few lower. However, he took a big step forward in the 2022/23 season, when he won the UK Championship, as well as his home event, the Northern Ireland Open. He also made the final of the British Open, and took the title at the World Grand Prix.

His good form continued in the 2023/24 season. In November 2023 he won the Champion of Champions event, beating Judd Trump in the final. He then won the Shoot Out in December and the Players Championship in February. Despite a so-so performance at the 2024 World Championship, where he was seeded fourth, Allen moved to the top of the world rankings. This was largely down to consistent performances rather than anything too spectacular but is still an incredible achievement.

Throughout his career, he has suffered from personal issues, including a major bout of depression after he split from the mother of his first child Reanne Evans, a former women’s world champion at snooker. He reportedly does not see his daughter, and has since been married – and then divorced – and also declared himself bankrupt. By 2022, he had reached 19 stone (he is only five feet eight inches tall) but since then he has really turned his life around.

Improvements in his physical and mental health have allowed Allen to finally reach his potential – and probably achieve a lot more than many thought he was capable of. At the time of writing, he holds only a narrow advantage over world number two, Judd Trump, and he is well aware that if Trump strings together a good sequence of events his time at the summit of the rankings may be brief. That said, he is determined to stay there for as long as possible and is targeting the lucrative Snooker Masters in Saudi Arabia at the end of August as a key event in his bid to hold onto top spot.

Can Allen Claim the World Championship?

Snooker’s biggest events form the Triple Crown, with the UK Championship, Masters, and, most of all, the World Championship, the three events that all players dream of winning. Allen has won two of the three but is lacking the most prestigious of the trio.

Back in 2009 as a callow newcomer to the world of snooker, he made the semi final at Sheffield and must have marvelled at quite how easy it all was. However, he would not get back to that stage of the World Championship again until 2023. In general, his performances on the very biggest stage have been below par, although he made the last eight in both 2010 and 2011. Since then he has invariably exited in the first or second round, 2023 aside.

It would take a big leap for him to claim the world title but it is certainly well within his reach. At 38 he is coming towards the end of his best years but given his improved fitness and state of mind, plus the confidence of being world number one, who knows?

Ronnie O’Sullivan is not the player he was, and so there is no dominant force right now. Trump, 2024 champion Kyren Wilson, and the Rocket are his main rivals but right now the bookies make The Pistol the joint-third favourite for glory in 2025. He’s priced at odds of 12/1 if you’re tempted!