The fifth and most recent instance of the tournament starting on a Friday was the 2020 edition: due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Championship was played from Friday 31 July to Sunday 16 August. Several changes to the qualifying system came into effect for the 2015 championship. All living world champions would be extended an opportunity to play in the qualifying rounds. The top 16 seeds would still qualify automatically for the first round at the Crucible, but all non-seeded players would have to start in the first of three qualifying rounds. Previously players seeded 17 to 32 only had to win one qualifying match to reach the final stages. The overall championship would increase from 128 to 144 players, with the additional places made available to former world champions and players from emerging countries. In 2020, another significant change was made to the qualifying competition for the World Championship. Whereas in previous years, the qualifying rounds were played like a mini-tournament (with all seeded players playing an unseeded player in the very first round), with the 16 "winners" being the qualifiers to go to the main draw using traditional knockout format, the new system involved seeding the players based on their world ranking. Players seeded 1-32 (representing 17–54 in the world rankings) would join the qualifying later than those who were seeded lower, or unseeded. The lowest-ranked and those who were invited as amateurs played in Round 1, with the winner moving on to play in Round 2 against a seeded player from 55 to 91 in the world rankings. In addition to the format change, the 2020 qualifying round became the first qualifying tournament to be broadcast on television in the history of snooker. Previously, only the Judgement Day round was broadcast on World Snookers' social media platforms. Since the 2020 tournament was held during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Rounds 1–3 were played as a single session best-of-11 frames match, with only the "Judgement Day" final round played with the usual best-of-19 system. This change to the length of matches persisted into the 2021 and 2022 championships for the same reasons. From 2023, the match length of the qualifying rounds reverted to the previous incarnation of best-of-19’s, but the seeded format remains in place. Winners World Championship finalists From its foundation in 1927, the world snooker championship was dominated by Joe Davis, who won each