Grand Prix

Grand Prix (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁɑ̃pʁi], meaning Grand Prize; plural Grands Prix) may refer to:

Sports competitions

World Snooker Championship

The World Snooker Championship is the leading snooker tournament both in terms of prestige and prize money. The first championship was held in 1927 and was won by Joe Davis. Davis won the first 15 championships before retiring from the event, undefeated, after his 1946 success. In the 1950s snooker went into a period of decline and the championship was not held after 1952, although an unofficial championship was held until 1957. In 1964 the championship was revived on a challenge basis and in 1969 the championship became a knock-out event again. Since 1977 it has been played at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The tournament is currently played over 17 days and ends on the first Monday in May. In the modern era (since 1969), the best record is that of Stephen Hendry, who won the title seven times. Steve Davis and Ray Reardon both won six times while Ronnie O'Sullivan has won five titles. The current champion is Stuart Bingham, who won the tournament for the first time in 2015.

World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association

The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), founded in 1968 and based in Bristol, the United Kingdom, is the governing body of men's professional snooker and English billiards. It sets the rules of the sport, organises tournaments, the pro-am, and pro tours, and engages in promotional activities on behalf of the sport.

Overview

The WPBSA operates as both the professional governing body of the two cue sports, alongside its amateur counterpart in the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF), as well as a trade association promoting snooker and billiards more generally.

Its subsidiary, the World Snooker Association, is responsible for running and administering snooker's main ranking circuit events. These include the Shanghai Masters, World Open, UK Championship, Welsh Open, China Open and the World Snooker Championship. The latter is the most famous and popular event on the snooker season, with a remarkable global audience. Staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield since 1977, it is the richest, most prestigious and most important tournament in snooker. The subsidiary is often referred to informally as simply World Snooker, although this is more properly the title of its website.

World championship

A world championship is generally an international sports competition open to elite competitors from across the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport or contest.

The title is usually awarded through a combination of specific contests or, less commonly, ranking systems (e.g. the ICC Test Championship), or a combination of the two (e.g. World Triathlon Championships in Triathlon). This determines a 'world champion', who or which is commonly considered the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field, although the vagaries of sport ensure that the competitor recognised at the best in an event is not always the 'world champion' (see Underdog).

Certain sports do not have a world championship, instead they may organise a world cup competition, or they may organize both. Often, the use of the term cup or championship in this sense is just a choice of words. Some sports have multiple champions because of multiple organizations such as mixed martial arts, boxing and wrestling.

Liang Wenbo

Liang Wenbo (Chinese: 梁文博, pinyin: Liáng Wénbó; born 5 March 1987 in Zhaodong, Suihua, Heilongjiang) is a Chinese professional snooker player. He is left-handed and currently ranked as China's number 2 player after Ding Junhui. Liang is based at the Grove Snooker Academy in Romford, England, United Kingdom.

Career

Amateur years

As an amateur, Liang's major feats were as follows:

Liang built on the positive start to his snooker career, winning an individual silver medal and a team gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games.

2004/2005

During the 2004/05 snooker season, he began his professional career playing on the Challenge Tour, the tier below the World Snooker Association Main Tour. He finished a lowly 104th out of 168 competitors, having only accumulated 2150 points.

2005/2006

Despite not qualifying for the Main Tour directly, Liang received a wildcard nomination to the Main Tour; this was because he won the 2005 IBSF World Under-21 Championship and also because not all of the players that were eligible for the Main Tour took their places. In his first ranking tournament, the Grand Prix, Liang lost in the first qualifying round to Rory McLeod 2–5. In the next ranking event, the UK Championship, he fared better, nearly whitewashing Alfred Burden in the first qualifying round 9–1 and subsequently losing in the second qualifying round to Marcus Campbell by the narrowest of margins, 8–9.