1980 World Snooker Championship 1980 World Snooker Championship The 1980 World Snooker Championship (also known as the 1980 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 22 April and 5 May 1980 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Cliff Thorburn won in the final 18–16 against Alex Higgins. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy. The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below: Numbers in (parentheses) indicate seedings. Source: There were 11 century breaks at the championship. Kirk Stevens and Steve Davis shared the high break prize when
John Higgins (snooker player) matches for money. Although an investigation cleared Higgins of match-fixing allegations, it found that he had brought the sport into disrepute by failing to report, and giving the impression of agreeing with, an invitation to breach the sport's betting rules. The WPBSA banned Higgins from professional competition for six months and fined him £75,000. He returned to the tour midway through the 2010/2011 season. After his return to snooker, Higgins added a third UK Championship title and claimed his fourth world title in 2011. He subsequently experienced a noted slump in form, and between 2012 and 2014 only won the