Player Profile - Mark Allen
DOB: 22 Feb 1986
Lives: Antrim
Provisional Ranking: 12th (Main Tour) Ranking Points this Season
Last 5 Seasons: 29-62-UR-UR-UR
Turned Pro: 2003
Best Ranking Performance: Last 16 - 888.com World Championship 2007
Last Seasons Prize Money: £52,975
Career Prize Money: (up to the start of 2008/09 season) £105,310
Highest Tournament Break: 139 - UK Championship 2005

Mark Allen once again made significant strides in his snooker career during the 2007/08 season, breaking into the top 16 of the world rankings after just three seasons on the professional Tour.
He enjoyed the best run of his career at his home tournament – the Northern Ireland Trophy in Belfast. Wins over Rod Lawler, Graeme Dott, Ryan Day and Gerard Greene put him into his first ranking event semi-final. "With every match I’m getting more and more support so I want to keep winning. It’s not often you get your home crowd behind you so you have to make the most of it,” said Allen. However, he was denied a place in the final by Dubliner Fergal O’Brien, losing 6-3.
Antrim’s Allen continued his form into the Maplin UK Championship, scoring a tremendous 9-4 defeat of his boyhood idol Stephen Hendry, before losing 9-5 to Mark Williams.
Later in the season, Allen made the quarter-finals of the Honghe Industrial China Open, beating Li Hang, Neil Robertson and Ali Carter, before his Beijing run was ended by Shaun Murphy.
Allen qualified for the final stages of the 888.com World Snooker Championship thanks to a 10-8 defeat of Ricky Walden and was drawn to face Hendry again. But having played superbly to lead 6-3, Allen missed a simple brown to go 7-3 up, and was made to regret that mistake. He also had an opportunity to win 10-8, missing a pink to a centre pocket, and Hendry punished him by clearing up and winning the decider for a 10-9 success.
"I think I played the better snooker over the whole match and perhaps deserved to win. But at the end of the day if don’t close out the match when you’re leading 9-7 and 6-3, that’s what happens," he said.
Allen then had to wait nervously on other results to find out whether he would win a place among the official top 16 – and he finally knew that place was secure when his friend Joe Swail lost a nail-biter 13-12 to Liang Wenbo.
A year earlier, Allen had made a sensational Crucible debut, beating former champion Ken Doherty 10-7. In the second round he lost 13-9 to Matthew Stevens.
The most gifted player to emerge from Northern Ireland since the days of Dennis Taylor and Alex Higgins, Allen won three of the biggest titles in amateur snooker before turning pro.
In 2004 he won the European Championship in Austria, beating Malta’s Alex Borg in the final. He went on to become IBSF World Amateur Champion, beating Steve Mifsud 11-6 in the final in Holland. He dedicated victory in this prestigious event to his parents, who sold their house to help fund his career.
In 2005 he added the European Under-19 Championship crown, beating Chris Norbury 6-5 in the final in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
He is a former Northern Ireland champion at under-14, under-16 and under-19 level.
He and ladies world champion Reanne Evans have one child, Lauren, born in May 2006.  Allen admits he and Evans have some tight battles on the practice table: "We usually have pretty close games - though she’s only beaten me once!”
Allen is a single-figure handicap golfer and a keen Manchester United fan.

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