The 1973 World Snooker Championship (also known as 1973 Park Drive World Snooker Championship for sponsorship reasons) was a snooker tournament that took place from 16 to 28 April 1973 at the City Exhibition Halls in Manchester, England. The scheduling was a change of practice from championships in the preceding years, which had taken place over several months. The tournament was the 1973 edition of the World Snooker Championship established in 1927. The 1973 tournament was promoted by Peter West and Patrick Nally, and sponsored by tobacco brand Park Drive, with £8,000 prize money. There were 24 entrants, a new championship record. Ray Reardon won the title by defeating Eddie Charlton 38 s to 32 in the final. It was Reardon's second World Championship win, after his first in 1970. He went on to win a further four titles, the last of them in 1978. Defending champion Alex Higgins lost 9–13 to Charlton in the semi-finals. Higgins's quarter-final match against Fred Davis was interrupted when rainwater leaked onto the snooker table they were using. There were six century breaks during the competition, the highest of which was 139 by John Spencer. Background The World Snooker Championship is a professional tournament and the official world championship of the game of snooker. The sport was developed in the late 19th century by British Army soldiers stationed in India. Professional English billiards player and billiard hall manager Joe Davis noticed the increasing popularity of snooker compared to billiards in the 1920s, and with Birmingham-based billiards equipment manager Bill Camkin, persuaded the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC) to recognise an official professional snooker championship in the 1926–27 season. In 1927, the final of the first professional snooker championship was held at Camkin's Hall; Davis won the tournament. The annual competition was not titled the World Championship until 1935, but the 1927 tournament is now referred to as the first World Snooker Championship. In 1952, following a dispute between the Professional Billiards Players' Association (PBPA) and the BACC about the distribution of income from the world championship, the PBPA members established an alternative competition known as the World Professional Match-play Championship, the editions of which are now recognised as world championships, whilst only two players entered for the BACC's 1952 World Snooker Championship. The World Professional Match-play Championship continued until 1957, after which there was no world championship until 1964, when it was staged