David 'Dave' Harold (born 9 December 1966) is an English professional snooker player from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. He is known by the nicknames of "the Hard Man" and "the Stoke Potter" (conflating his home city's past pottery industry and his profession of potting snooker balls). He is also the first player on the television circuit to sport a plaster on his chin as a guide for his cue, which is a practise now adopted by Graeme Dott. As an amateur he played as David Harold, but since turning professional in 1991 he has been registered as Dave Harold. He has three children.

He has won one ranking title, reached two further finals and several semi-finals, and spent four seasons ranked among the top 16. Harold is renowned for both his very strong defensive play and his unusual cue-action, with which he is able to unleash a great deal of power on a shot without using backswing on the cue. Despite safety play ultimately being considered his strong point, he has compiled 112 century breaks, putting him 22nd on the all time list.Steve Davis has commented that he is not the most naturally gifted player, but makes up for this with strong tactical play. His technique and grinding play has been compared to that of Cliff Thorburn.

Ronald Antonio "Ronnie" O'Sullivan (born 5 December 1975) is an English professional snooker player known for his rapid playing style, and is nicknamed "The Rocket". He has been World Champion on four occasions (2001, 2004, 2008 and 2012) and, with career earnings of over £6 million is second after Stephen Hendry on snooker's all-time prize-money list. O'Sullivan has been the world's no. 1 player on five occasions, and has won a total of 24 ranking titles. He is second, again behind Hendry, on the list of players making the most competitive century breaks, with a total of 678. O'Sullivan has compiled 11 maximum breaks in professional competition, a record which he shares with Hendry. He also holds the record for the fastest maximum break, at 5 minutes 20 seconds.

O'Sullivan is considered by many fans, critics and professionals, including fellow multiple-World Championship winners Hendry and Steve Davis, as the most naturally talented player in the history of the game. He has, however, been involved in a number of controversial incidents during his career.

Allister "Ali" Carter (born 25 July 1979, Colchester, Essex, England) is an English professional snooker player, who lives in Chelmsford. He is a two-time World Championship runner-up, twice losing to Ronnie O'Sullivan in 2008 and 2012. He has also won two ranking titles and been as high as second in the world rankings.

Carter turned professional in 1996. He first emerged in 1999, winning the WPBSA Association Young Player of the Year award after winning the Benson and Hedges Championship in 1999 – this earned him a wild card place in the Masters. He also reached the semi-finals of the 1999 Grand Prix. It was eight years before he reached another ranking semi-final, the 2007 Malta Cup.

He was close to the elite top 16 for three successive seasons ranking as 17, 19, and 19 through 2003/04, 2004/05 and 2005/06, respectively, before reaching it in the 2006/07 season and remaining there in 2008.

He reached the last 16 (second round) of the World Championship in 2005, after scoring the first 10–0 victory in the event since 1993 against 1993 semi-finalist James Wattana in qualifying. At the 2007 World Championship he beat Andy Hicks in the first round, 10–4, before beating World No. 1 and seven-time champion Stephen Hendry 13–6 to reach his first World Championship quarter-final and guarantee a place in the Top-16. Carter now has a 5–4 record against Hendry; conversely, he has never beaten Ronnie O'Sullivan in 12 attempts.

Stephen Gordon Hendry, MBE (born 13 January 1969) is a retired Scottish professional snooker player. In 1990, he was the youngest-ever snooker World Champion, at the age of 21. He has won the World Championship a record seven times and was snooker's world number one for eight consecutive years between 1990 and 1998, and again in 2006/2007. Hendry has the distinction of holding the most world ranking titles (36) and leads the field of snooker players with 775 competitive century breaks. He also holds the record with Ronnie O'Sullivan for the most competitive maximum breaks, with 11.

Hendry started playing snooker in 1981, aged 12. Two years later he won the Scottish U-16 Championship. He also appeared on BBC's Junior version of Pot Black. The following year he won the Scottish Amateur Championship and also became the youngest ever entrant in the World Amateur Championship. In 1985, after retaining the Scottish Amateur Championship, he turned professional. At 16 years and three months old he was the youngest ever professional.

Alexander Gordon "Alex" Higgins (18 March 1949 – 24 July 2010), also known by his nickname of Hurricane Higgins, was a Northern Irish professional snooker player who was twice World Champion and twice runner-up. Higgins earned the nickname The Hurricane because of his speed of play. Higgins was also a former World Doubles champion with Jimmy White and won the World Cup three times with the All Ireland team. He also came to be known as the People's Champion because of his popularity.

Higgins is often credited to have brought the game of snooker to a wider audience and contributing to its peak in popularity in the eighties.

Higgins had a reputation as an unpredictable and difficult character. He was a heavy smoker, struggled with drinking and gambling, and admitted to using cocaine and marijuana. Diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998, Higgins was found dead in his Belfast home on 24 July 2010.

Alex Higgins was born in Belfast and had three sisters. He started playing snooker at the age of 11, often in the Jampot club in his native Sandy Row area of south Belfast and later in the YMCA in the nearby city centre. At age 14 and weighing seven and a half stones (47.6 kg), he left for England and a career as a jockey. However, he never made the title because, in his youth days, he drank a lot of Guinness and ate a lot of chocolate which made him too heavy to ride competitively. He returned to Belfast and by 1965, aged 16, he had compiled his first maximum break. In 1968 he won the All-Ireland and Northern Ireland Amateur Snooker Championships.