Mark King

D.O.B: 28 Mar 1974
Lives: Braintree, Essex
Turned Pro: 1991
Best Ranking Performance: Runner-up - Welsh Open 1997, Irish Masters 2004
Last season World Snooker Tour prize money: £72,576
Highest Tournament Break: 146

King got off to a strong start to the 2010/11 season, but tailed off in subsequent ranking events, dropped out of the top 16 and finished the campaign at No 26 in the world.

At the first tournament of the season, the Roewe Shanghai Masters, King beat Joe Delaney and Peter Ebdon to reach the quarter-finals, before his run was ended by Mark Selby.

He took revenge on Selby at the Ladbrokes Mobile Masters, snooker's biggest invitation event, by beating the two-times Wembley Champion 6-4 in the first round. It was King's best performance of the season, highlighted by a break of 139. "That's the best break-building I've done for some time," said King.

"It's a part of my game I really needed to work on. I knew that, if I didn't, I'd be dropping down the rankings like a sack of potatoes. There's no one in the game I haven't beaten. A lot of the time what beats me is myself." But he was no match for Jamie Cope in the next round and lost 6-1.

King finished the season at the Crucible after beating Mike Dunn 10-5 in the final qualifying round of the Betfred.com World Championship, but went down 10-7 to Graeme Dott in the first round at Sheffield.

In 2006, King reached the semi-finals of the Grand Prix - progressing from the round robin phase in Aberdeen in bizarre circumstances. He had already booked his flight home as he had assumed that he could not qualify from his group - but did just that thanks to Ali Carter's 3-2 win over Shaun Murphy.
King went on to beat Stephen Lee and John Higgins but was denied the third ranking final of his career by Jamie Cope.

His first ranking final was the 1997 Welsh Open when he accounted for the likes of Steve Davis and Mark Williams but lost 9-2 to Stephen Hendry.

The second was the 2004 Irish Masters when embarked upon a giant-killing run with wins over Hendry, Jimmy White, Graeme Dott and local favourite Ken Doherty. But Peter Ebdon denied him the silverware with a 10-7 success.

That came just a few months after King had announced his retirement from snooker - a decision he later reversed. "At the time I wanted to snap my cue," he said. "I took a couple of weeks off then had a long chat with my wife and we agreed that I should stick with snooker."

The West Ham fan enjoys playing football and spending time with his wife and three young children Maizie, Freddie and Polly. He loves tattoos and has at least ten on his arms and back.

King's flirtation with boxing came to an abrupt end when he lost a three-round contest against Quinten Hann in the infamous Pot Whack in London in 2004.