The 2000 Champions Cup was a professional invitational snooker tournament which was held from 26 August to 3 September 2000, at the Brighton Centre, in Brighton, East Sussex. The tournament was the first of five World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) invitational events of the 2000–01 snooker season and the first overall. It preceded the season's second invitational tournament, the 2000 Scottish Masters. There were eight players who competed in the event: seven were major tournament winners from the 1999–2000 season and one was a wild card entry. The competition featured a total prize fund of £200,000, with £100,000 going to the winner.
Ronnie O'Sullivan won the tournament, defeating Mark Williams, the world champion, seven to five (7–5) to claim the 17th career professional snooker competition of his career. In the semi-finals, O'Sullivan defeated the reigning holder of the Champions Cup trophy Stephen Hendry 5–2 and Williams beat John Higgins 5–2. O'Sullivan made the highest of the tournament of 140 in his match against wild card entrant Jimmy White. After the tournament, Stephen Lee was fined £8,500 for testing positive for traces of marijuana in his system during a routine drugs test.
Background
The tournament was first played as the Charity Challenge in 1995. It had the unique distinction of players competing for charity with the prize money being donated to their respective causes. The charity aspect was discarded after five years and the tournament was re-branded the Champions Cup with a new "winner takes all" format of players who won major tournaments from the season prior invited to compete. The 2000 Champions Cup was the first of five World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) invitational events of the 2000–01 snooker season and was held at the Brighton Centre in Brighton, East Sussex from 26 August to 3 September. The tournament preceded the 2000 Scottish Masters. The Champions Cup had a prize fund of £200,000, and was broadcast in the United Kingdom on ITV.
Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money for 2000 is shown below.
Winner: £100,000
Runner-up: £35,000
Semi-final (×2): £15,000
Group stage (×4): £5,000
Highest break: £5,000
Maximum break: £20,000
Total: £200,000
Rules
A total of seven players who won major tournaments in the 1999–2000 season and one wild card selected by ITV competed in the Champions Cup. All group stage matches were part of a round-robin format and all games were best-of-9 until the final which was best-of-13 frames. Entrants were drawn into two groups of four and played one match against the other three in their group. The overall winner of both groups was determined by the number of matches won. In the event of a draw, the number of frames won decided the group winner. If this method proved ineffective, a match between the tied players would occur. The winner of each group was drawn to play the runner-up of the opposite group in the semi-finals.
Tournament summary
Group stages
Group A
The 12 best-of-9 frame group stage games occurred between 27 August to 1 September. Mark Williams, the world champion who was recovering from a left thumb injury after being bitten several times by his pet rottweiler at his Cwm home, played the tournament's first match against Ken Doherty from Ireland. Doherty forced a final frame decider after coming from 2–0 and 4–2 behind but his chance of victory was gone by missing a challenging and Williams won the match five frames to four (5–4). The defending Champions Cup holder Stephen Hendry faced Millennium Cup winner Stephen Lee in a three-hour opening match. Lee took the first two frames and Hendry responded by winning four successive frames with consecutive half-centuries. Lee went level at 4–4 to force a final fame decider that Hendry won with a of 53.