’50 times worse than driving test’ – Dealing with Crucible pressure at the World Snooker Championship

So how do you deal with Crucible pressure when you’re stuck in a chair?

“The psychology aspect of snooker is huge,” said subconscious brain and performance coach Chris Henry, who has worked with some of the sport’s biggest names including Murphy, Stephen Hendry, Mark Selby, Luca Brecel, Jimmy White, Ali Carter and 2026 debutant Liam Pullen.

“In snooker you have to be very mentally strong, you have to be tough and know how to deal with the situation. It’s not about what happened, it’s how you choose to deal with what happened.”

“Snooker is a dead-ball sport so you have a long time to think about things and that’s not always good. It’s awful to sit in the chair, feeling completely helpless, especially if you’re not playing well and you’re embarrassed.

“It’s better to get out of that environment. Subconsciously negative things happen and you need to change to get to a better situation.”

To quickly move from negative to positive, he recommends “doing some breathing exercises to calm down and get into a performance state.”

Carter provided one of the best examples of the rapid transition from negative to positive when he found himself 4-0 down to John Higgins midway through the session, conceding just 37 points in four brutal frames.

“I would have been so happy to get in my car and go home, I was absolutely seething,” Carter said later.

But after Carter recovered, he won all five remaining frames of the session against the four-time champion, but the Scots eventually prevailed 10-7.