New Home BUT Same City for World Qualifiers.

The qualifying rounds of snooker's biggest tournament, the World Championship, will be held at the prestigious Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield next year.

Ponds Forge stages a range of national and international sporting events every year and will host snooker for the first time with the World Championship qualifiers from April 8 to 16, 2014.

All players seeded outside the top 16 will be battling for places in the final stages at the Crucible Theatre.

Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Ken Doherty and rising stars like Jack Lisowksi and Michael White are likely to be among those striving for a coveted spot at the Crucible. The 16 qualifiers will then be drawn at random against the top 16 seeds.

A spokesman for World Snooker said: "We're thrilled to be staging the qualifying rounds of our biggest event at Ponds Forge for the first time. It's a fantastic venue and it's just a stone's throw from the Crucible so the players and fans will have a keen sense of what is at stake.