Snooker wonderkid Michał Szubarczyk becomes second-youngest winner of IBSF World Championship

The 14-year-old from Poland defeated home player and 2023 champion Ali Alobaidli 5-2 in the final to add his name to an illustrious roll of honour.

Following a political fallout between the International Billiards and Snooker Federation and the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association in recent years, the IBSF World Championship accolade doesn’t hold the same gravitas it once did due to the winner no longer receiving an invite to the World Snooker Tour professional circuit.

With that carrot no longer dangled, the majority of the world’s top amateur players no longer play in the IBSF’s flagship event, instead competing in the World Snooker Federation Championship - organised by the WPBSA - which carries a professional tour card and is arguably seen as the sport’s top amateur competition.

The IBSF’s biggest tournament also used to move around the world on an annual basis - countries such as Sri Lanka, Papau New Guinea, Canada, and New Zealand have previously been hosts - but in four of the last five years, including the last three, it has stayed in Doha, which also held it in 2016 and 2017.

Nonetheless, this is still a prestigious title to win with lineage going all the way back to 1963 when Gary Owen of Wales claimed the inaugural title in India.

Teenager Szubarczyk joins an esteemed roll of honour that lists a plethora of future professional ranking event winners: Doug Mountjoy (1976), Jimmy White (1980), Darren Morgan (1987), James Wattana (1988), Ken Doherty (1989), Stuart Bingham (1996), Marco Fu (1997), Stephen Maguire (2000), Mark Allen (2004), Thepchaiya Un-Nooh (2008), Hossein Vafaei (2011) and Yan Bingtao (2014).

Szubarczyk is the first cueist from Europe to win the IBSF world crown since Alfie Burden’s triumph in 2009. From 2010, the title had exclusively been won by players from Asia.

This has been known as the World Amateur Snooker Championship in the past, but several current professional players on the World Snooker Tour were in this year’s event; Sahil Nayyar, Lim Kok Leong, Amir Sarkhosh, Mohammed Shebab, and Szubarczyk himself.

The youngster won all three of his group games to progress to the knockout rounds where he eliminated Hussain Khan (India) 4-0, reigning champion and three-times winner overall Muhammad Asif (Pakistan) 4-3 in the quarter-finals, and then Nicolas Mortreux (France) 5-1 in the last four.

In the final, Szubarczyk produced breaks of 71, 51, 53 and 76 in his victory over 33-year-old Alobaidli - who saw off former professional Harvey Chandler 5-2 in the other semi-final tie - to win the title and pocket the first prize of 25,000 US Dollars.

Aged 14 years, 10 months and 1 day, Szubarczyk is only a few days older than China’s Yan was when he tasted glory in 2014.

Last year, Szubarczyk won the IBSF World Under-21 Championship, and earlier this year he did the EBSA European Under-16 and Under-18 Championship title double. A few days later, he reached the final of the open-aged EBSA European Amateur Championship where he lost to Liam Highfield but secured a place on the World Snooker Tour, becoming the sport’s youngest-ever professional.

Despite his very young age, Szubarczyk has acquitted himself well on the top tier in recent months, winning two matches at the Saudi Arabia Masters, and qualifying for the main venues stages of both the Xi’an Grand Prix and the International Championship.

In the IBSF World's Women Snooker Championship held at the same venue, India's Anupama Ramachandran ousted professional Ng On Yee 3-2 in the final to win the title.