Stuart Bingham

D.O.B. 21 May 1976
Lives Basildon, Essex
Last 5 Seasons21-21-23-24-37
Turned Pro 1995
Best Ranking Performance Quarter-finals - Welsh Open 1999, Grand Prix and UK Championship 2005, Shanghai Masters 2007
Last season World Snooker Tour prize money£38,270
Highest Tournament Break 147 - UK Tour Event Three 1999, Masters qualifier 2005

After a strong start to the 2009/10 season, Bingham tailed off towards the end and finished with a drop of eight places down the rankings to No 29.
At the Roewe Shanghai Masters he reached the last 16, beating Mark Selby at the venue before losing to Ding Junhui. He also got to the same stage of the Pukka Pies UK Championship, beating Joe Perry before losing to Stephen Maguire.
But the season finished in disappointment as he went down 10-2 to Stuart Pettman in the final qualifying round of the Betfred.com World Snooker Championship.
Bingham made a piece of snooker history in 2006 by becoming the first player ever to win the Masters qualifying event in consecutive seasons.
Indeed, by beating Mark Selby 6-2 in the final at the World Snooker Academy he became the first player to win the tournament twice. "It’s great to have a bit of snooker history to my name," he said. "It was a fantastic experience to play at Wembley last year, there’s so much history to the event. I’m delighted to be going back."
In 2005/06, Bingham enjoyed a sensational run of 13 consecutive wins in qualifiers, which won him a bet with manager Gary Purkiss and earned him a new BMW X5.
Bingham went on to reach the quarter-finals of the UK Championship. "My level has gone up a gear," he said after a 9-3 defeat of Matthew Stevens.
The Basildon cueman has caused a stir at the Crucible on two occasions. In 2000 he scored one of the event’s biggest ever first-round shocks, beating defending world champion Stephen Hendry 10-7, before losing 13-9 to Jimmy White.
Two years later he hit the headlines for less happy reasons during a first round match against Ken Doherty when he came within two balls of a maximum 147 and a £167,000 jackpot but missed the final pink. "I suppose the £167,000 wasn’t mine to start with, but it’s hard to take," he said. "Some bloke came up to me last night and said I had cost him £20 by missing the pink. I said ’how do you think I feel!’"
Bingham, world amateur champion in 1996, is a talented golfer and plays to a single-figure handicap.