Player Profile - Mark King
DOB: 28 Mar 1974
Lives: Romford, Essex
Provisional Ranking: 16th (Main Tour) Ranking Points this Season
Last 5 Seasons: 21-29-20-23-22
Turned Pro: 1991
Best Ranking Performance: Runner-up - Welsh Open 1997, Irish Masters 2004
Last Seasons Prize Money: £59,400
Career Prize Money: (up to start of 2008/09 season): £803,760
Highest Tournament Break: 143 - Thailand Open 1997

King earned his third spell among the top 16 of the official rankings with some fine results last season. He lost his first round match in only one of the seven ranking events, and reached the last 16 of three of those.
Indeed, two of those three were snooker’s two most important ranking events. In the Maplin UK Championship, Romford’s King edged out David Gray 9-7 in the final qualifying round then Stephen Lee 9-8 at the venue, but was then on the wrong end of a 9-1 defeat to Ronnie O’Sullivan.
King was the scourge of Jimmy White’s fans in qualifying for the 888.com World Snooker Championship, dismissing the Whirlwind 10-3. He then caused one of the shocks of the season by beating Mark Selby, the 2007 runner-up, 10-8 at the Crucible. But King’s hopes of reaching the quarter-finals at Sheffield for the first time ended with a 13-9 defeat to Peter Ebdon. But he finished with a rise of six places in the rankings to No 15.
During the previous season, King reached the semi-finals of the Royal London Watches Grand Prix – progressing from the round robin phase in Aberdeen in bizarre circumstances. He had already booked his flight home as he had assumed that he could not qualify from his group – but did just that thanks to Ali Carter’s 3-2 win over Shaun Murphy.
King went on to beat Stephen Lee and John Higgins but was denied the third ranking final of his career by Jamie Cope.
His first ranking final was the 1997 Welsh Open when he accounted for the likes of Steve Davis and Mark Williams but lost 9-2 to Stephen Hendry.
The second was the 2004 Irish Masters when embarked upon a giant-killing run with wins over Hendry, Jimmy White, Graeme Dott and local favourite Ken Doherty. But Peter Ebdon denied him the silverware with a 10-7 success.
That came just a few months after King had announced his retirement from snooker – a decision he later reversed. "At the time I wanted to snap my cue," he said. "I took a couple of weeks off then had a long chat with my wife and we agreed that I should stick with snooker."
The West Ham fan enjoys spending time with his wife and two young children.
King’s flirtation with boxing came to an abrupt end when he lost a three-round contest against Quinten Hann in the infamous Pot Whack at York Hall in Bethnal Green.

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