Reanne Evans (born 25 October 1985) is an English professional snooker player and a regular pundit for televised snooker coverage. She also competes on the World Women's Snooker Tour, where she is the current women's world number one. She received an MBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for her services to women's snooker.
Born in Dudley, West Midlands, Evans began playing snooker at age 14, influenced by her older brothers. She competed in her first World Women's Snooker Championship in 2002, aged 16, when she reached the semi-finals. She went on to become the most successful female player in the sport's history, winning a record 12 women's world titles, including 10 consecutively between 2005 and 2014, breaking the previous record of seven set by Allison Fisher. Evans also set records by winning 12 UK Women's Snooker Championships, 58 ranking titles on the women's tour overall, and 90 consecutive victories in women's matches between 2008 and 2011. She has achieved the highest break on the women's tour, having made 140 twice.
Evans received a wildcard to the professional World Snooker Tour for the 2010–11 season, becoming the first woman to compete professionally since Fisher 16 years previously, but was relegated at the end of the season after 18 consecutive defeats. In 2013, she qualified for the Wuxi Classic as an amateur competitor, becoming the first woman to reach the final stages of a professional ranking snooker tournament. She received wildcards to the World Snooker Championship qualifying rounds in 2015 and from 2017–21; her best performance was reaching the second qualifying round in 2017 after defeating Finnish player Robin Hull 10–8.
On International Women's Day in 2021, the World Snooker Tour announced that the two top-ranked players on the women's tour—then Evans and Ng On-yee—would receive two-year professional tour cards to begin in the 2021–22 season. Evans's only victory during her two years on tour came at the 2023 Snooker Shoot Out (2022–23 season), when she defeated Stuart Bingham in the last 128, becoming the first woman to win a televised match at a ranking event. She lost her professional tour card when she ended the 2022–23 season in 126th place in the snooker world rankings. However, she ended the season at number one in the women's world rankings, which secured her a new two-year professional tour card to begin in the 2023–24 season.
Women's snooker
World Ladies Billiards and Snooker/World Women's Snooker
Aged 16 in 2002, Evans competed in her first World Women's Snooker Championship. She defeated third seed Lynette Horsburgh 4–3 in the quarter-finals but lost 0–4 to eventual champion Kelly Fisher in the semi-finals. She won her first ranking tournament, the Connie Gough Memorial Championship, in 2004. This was the only women's ranking event held in the 2003–04 season, after Fisher, then the top female player in the rankings, had departed from the circuit to play nine-ball pool in the United States.
Evans won her first world championship in 2005 with a 6–4 victory over Horsburgh in the final, which featured one frame that was replayed because of a problem with the scoring. She retained the title in 2006 just six weeks before she was due to give birth, defeating Emma Bonney 5–3 in the final. She also won the 2006 WLBSA mixed doubles title, partnering with Mark Allen to beat Sonia Chapman and Matthew Couch 3–0 in the final.
She went on to win the World Women's Snooker Championship 10 consecutive times from 2005 to 2014, and claimed the title again in 2016 and 2019. Her total of 12 women's world titles is a record, ahead of Allison Fisher's seven.
Her loss to Maria Catalano at the 2011 Northern Classic brought to an end an unbeaten run of 90 women's snooker matches.
She won the 2019 Women's Tour Championship, held at the Crucible Theatre, beating Nutcharut Wongharuthai in the semi-finals and Ng On-yee in the final.
In September 2021, following an 18-month suspension of the Women's Snooker Tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Evans won the 2021 UK Women's Championship, defeating Rebecca Kenna 4–0 in the final. In November 2021, she was runner-up to Ng in the Eden Women's Masters, losing the final 3–4 after having led 3–1. In January 2022, she lost 3–4 to Wongharuthai in the final of the British Women's Open. At the 2022 World Women's Snooker Championship in February, Evans was the defending champion, but she lost 1–4 to Belgian player Wendy Jans in the quarter-finals, the first time she had not reached at least the semi-finals of the tournament. She retained her number one place in the women's world rankings at the end of the 2021–22 season, although Ng and Wongharuthai closed the gap in ranking points.