The World Snooker Championship 2010 starts on the 17th April with John Higgins, Marco Fu, Mark Selby, Shephen Hendry, Mark Allen and Joe Perry taking on the yet to be decided World Snooker Championship qualifiers. The World Snooker Championship Qualifiers will take place between Friday the 26th February and Tuesday the 9th March. They’ll be held in Sheffield at the English Institute of Sport’s Badminton Hall. The qualifiers have been split into three stages and the matches the format is best out of 19 frames.

Stage one of the World Snooker Championship qualifiers will take place on the 26th of February and feature 16 players fighting for 4 places into the second stage of the competition. It will kick of at 10am with 4 best out of 19 frame matches, the 4 winners will progress into another knockout round to be placed at 7:30pm later that day. The second four qualifiers will begin at 2:30pm and again the winners will play in the second knockout round at 7:30pm. Below is the format of stage one of the World Snooker Championship qualifiers.

World Snooker Championship Qualifiers: Stage One

Qualifiers starting at 10am

• Les Dodd v Philip Minchin: Match 1
• Paul Wykes v David Taylor: Match 2
• David Singh v Colin Mitchell: Match 3
• Ali Bassiri v Neil Selman: Match 4

Qualifiers starting at 2.30pm

• Barry West v Christopher Flight: Match 5
• Del Smith v Phil Seaton: Match 6
• Bill Oliver v Nic Barrow: Match 7
• Stephen Ormerod v Paul Cavney: Match 8

Qualifiers starting at 7.30pm

• Winner match 1 v Winner match 2: Match 9
• Winner match 3 v Winner match 4: Match 10
• Winner match 5 v Winner match 6: Match 11
• Winner match 7 v Winner match 8: Match 12

After the day’s snooker the 4 winners of the Stage One, 7:30pm matches will be drawn for the Stage Two qualifiers starting on the 27th February.