These days, most betting sites are also snooker betting sites because the popularity of snooker has determined that it’s one of those sports that all bookmakers look to offer.
But snooker betting may be new to many, and it has rules, betting markets and strategies that are unique to it and worth knowing about. Find out what they are.
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Snooker is similar to tennis or darts in that you only need to beat the player in front of you rather than having to beat everyone in the field at the same time, as happens with the likes of golf or a horse race.
Snooker matches are generally played as part of a tournament on a knockout basis, though occasionally, some tournaments use the round-robin format where players have matches against the other members of their group with the top player or top two progressing to the next round, where it becomes a knockout format.
The best snooker betting sites will offer a combination of outright markets and match betting markets.
Outrights tend to be who will go on to win that tournament, with some snooker bookmakers keeping the Winner market open while the matches are in progress, while other snooker betting sites suspend the market during games and then re-open them and price them up again once the match is over.
But most snooker betting online is done on individual matches rather than on the whole tournament.
Snooker is usually played on a best-of-5/7/9/15/21, etc frames basis, and matches can last from anything between a couple of hours to 15-plus hours, as is the case at the Snooker World Championships.
The best betting sites will offer most of their betting markets in-play as well as pre-match and lay odds across numerous different markets involving the winner, handicaps, who will win the next frame, the correct score and other key elements of the match, which we’ll discuss in due course.
The snooker season runs from June to May every year, and there are currently 126 professional players on the World Snooker Tour who, to an extent, can choose to enter as many of the 23 events making up the season as they wish.
That said, in some cases, depending on their own ranking or the size of the field, they may have to play qualifying matches in order to enter some of them. Five of the events from those 23, such as The Masters and the Shanghai Masters, are non-ranking events, meaning that players get prize money (and the trophy if they win it) but not ranking points.
The rest of the tournaments award both prize money and ranking points.
This is the biggest, longest, most prestigious, richest and hardest tournament of all to win.
It’s been played every year at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield since 1977 between mid-April and early May, lasting two and a half weeks, including the qualifying rounds to the main draw. The first prize is £500,000, while the tournament’s total prize pool is £2,395,000.
The fact that only the world’s very best get to compete and the gruelling schedule that includes a best-of-33 frames semi-final and best-of-35 final means the cream tends to rise to the top here with the list of former winners reading like a ‘who’s who’ of snooker greats.
One of the nice things about this two-week tournament and the long format of the matches from a snooker betting perspective is that you have plenty of time to watch the players in action towards the start, so you can make good, educated betting decisions the next time that player is in action.
The UK Championship is probably the second-most important tournament on the calendar in terms of prestige, and it’s certainly the second-richest in terms of prize money, with a total prize pool of £1,009,000 and £250,000 on offer for the winner.
It’s held at the Barbican Centre in York every year between late November and early December, and like the World Championship, it is one of the three events making up The Triple Crown.
Its popularity benefits from the fact that, like the World Championship, it’s televised on the BBC (in addition to Eurosport), so anyone can watch the coverage without needing satellite channels that need to be paid for.
It also helps that the sport’s most popular player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, has been so successful here over the years, with his eight wins being an all-time record.
The Masters is the third and last of the Triple Crown events and is also shown live on the BBC and Eurosport, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
Unlike the other two, it’s a non-ranking event, meaning that players don’t win points that contribute to their world ranking. It’s also a much smaller field, with just the top 16-ranked players in the world invited to play.
Interestingly, it’s played at what is by far the biggest venue of the lot, the Alexandra Palace in London, which holds over 10,000 people.
Most of those fans are there to see Londoner Ronnie O’Sullivan in action, who, as is the case with most big tournaments, hasn’t disappointed his fans, winning it the same eight times as he’s won The Masters, and one more than he’s won the World Championship.
O’Sullivan did, however, withdraw ahead of the 2025 edition on medical grounds, which was eventually won by Shaun Murphy.
The smaller field and high-class players in it lead to matches tending to be very close, meaning those who enjoy live snooker betting can pick and choose their moment as to when they think is best to play the match winner market at the snooker betting site of their choice.
Most customers at established and new betting sites will look towards the winner market as their first call, which is also the case with most other sports such as tennis, football or darts. But it’s by no means the only market on offer for betting on snooker. Here’s what you need to know about the winner market, plus some of the others.
There’s no tie or draw in the match-winner market for online snooker betting, meaning that it’s a two-runner market (Player A/Player B) like in tennis or darts. So that makes it one of the easier ones to play.
The best bookies for snooker betting lay odds before the match begins based on such factors as their ranking, recent form and head-to-head record and constantly update their live snooker betting odds as the match progresses.
This is one of the betting types that was made for live betting. In a way, it’s a match within a match. The greatest similarity to it is betting on who will win the next leg in darts or the next game in tennis.
So, in this case, the overall winner of the match is irrelevant, and this market is solely concerned with who wins the next frame/frame in progress.
At the start of the match, both the snooker betting site and the customer will know how many frames the two players need to win in order to win the match. Let’s say it’s a best-of-nine frame match, meaning that the player getting to five frames first wins and that the maximum number of frames there can be in the match is nine if it were to end 5-4.
Let’s say the bookie decides to set the line for the total number of frames at 7.5. The reason it’s always 0.5 at the end is to avoid the possibility of a tie. For example, if it ended 5-2, then 7 (rather than 7.5) would be neither a winner nor a loser.
Once the bookie has set the line, then it’s up to the customer to decide if they think the match will have seven or fewer frames, or eight or more.
This one is both a match market and an Outright market.
First up, a break is the number of points a player scores in one visit to the table without missing a shot.
The maximum break possible in snooker is 147 and requires the player to pot all 15 red balls and the black (the most valuable of the coloured balls) after each of those 15 (rather than one of the lower-value colour ones), before then potting each of the colours in the correct order and then the black at the end.
But a 147 break is extremely rare, anything over 100 is excellent, while breaks 60 or 70 are generally very valuable.
As an Outright market, you’re betting on which player will record the highest break of the whole tournament. As a match market, you’re betting on which of the two players in action will get the highest break.
As is the case with all sports betting, there’s more to betting on snooker than first meets the eye.
We’ll give you some tips to get you started just now, but there’s absolutely no substitute for watching lots of snooker on TV, reading about it, getting to know the players and deciding which markets you want to play and what strategies you’re going to have in place to try to win.
A good starting point is to understand the complex rules of the game regarding the scoring system, how fouls and penalties work, and the role of the referee in the game.
Learn what style of play different protagonists have and how that might affect the game as a whole. For example, O’Sullivan and Judd Trump are very aggressive players who go for lots of risky shots, while Mark Selby and Ali Carter are more cautious and not afraid to use defensive shots to gain an advantage.
Different tournaments have different formats. An attacking, mercurial player might, therefore, have a better chance of winning a best-of-five match against a better-ranked player than he would in a longer match (for example, best-of-fifteen) as he’s likely not to be as consistent over a longer period, so bet accordingly.
It goes without saying that a snooker player fresh from winning a tournament the week before and with three or four tournament wins under their belt for the season is in a rich vein of form. You’d also think that if he’s up against a player who has lost six matches in a row, he should go on to win the game.
So recent form is certainly one of the most important considerations, but so is the head-to-head record between the two.
If Player A’s slow defensive style tends to get the better of Player B’s free-flowing game and the head-to-head record between the two suggests Player A has the edge in this match despite being the outsider, then, by all means, use that knowledge to your advantage.
Tournament form is also important in that certain players perform at their best in the UK Championship or the Welsh Open but might struggle to play overseas, for example, in the Shanghai Masters.
The ‘walk before you can run’ theory certainly applies here.
The first piece of advice, if you’re new to snooker betting, is to do some ‘paper betting’ to begin with: don’t place real money bets but rather place pretend bets to see how they would have done and make a note of which won and lost.
But if you’re going to play for real cash, you’re advised to stick to simple markets, like the match winner or the next frame winner, to begin with. They’re easier to play than handicaps, correct score and total frames, so focus on the simple ones first until you get your head around it all.
