a World Championship final. There were eighty-six century breaks made during the Championship, equalling the record set in 2015. A new record of ten centuries in a professional match was set in the semi-final between Ding Junhui and Alan McManus, with Ding also setting a new record of seven centuries by one player in a World Championship match. Mark Selby and Marco Fu set a new record for the longest frame of snooker ever played at the Crucible, seventy minutes eleven seconds. Prize money for the 2017 Championship was a record £1,750,000 with the winner receiving £375,000. Prize money for first-round losers was a record £16,000, exceeding the £15,000 players received in 2003. In a high-quality and tightly contested semi-final, defending champion Mark Selby beat Ding Junhui 17–15 in a repeat of the previous year's final. Selby met John Higgins, in a repeat of the 2007 final. Higgins was the second oldest Crucible finalist at ; only Ray Reardon had been older. Selby trailed 4–10 during the second session but then won twelve of the next fourteen frames to lead 16–12. Higgins won the next three frames but Selby took the title 18–15, becoming champion for the third time in four years, joining Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, and Ronnie O'Sullivan as the only men to have successfully defended the title since its move to the Crucible. In 2018, two "class of '92" players, Mark Williams and John Higgins, met in the final. Their rivalry dated back to the late 1990s, although only three of their meetings had been in the World Championships, all in semifinals, in 1999, 2000 (both won by Williams 17–15) and 2011 (won by Higgins 17–14). The match was closely contested, Williams coming out on top by 18–16 to win the World Championship for the first time since 2003, setting a new record for the longest gap between World Championship victories. He won £425,000. Higgins reached the final again in 2019, only to be beaten 18–9 by Judd Trump, who won £500,000. Their final set records for the most century breaks in a professional match, with 11, beating the previous record of 10 set in the 2016 semifinal between Ding Junhui and Alan McManus. It also set a record for the most centuries in a Crucible final, bettering the previous record of eight, set in 2002 when Stephen Hendry played Peter Ebdon, and equalled in 2013 when