MARK Allen will be hoping he can turn on the style to book his place in the World Snooker Championship final.
While the eyes of the snooker world are focused on the World Snooker Championship, we look at the player who set the tournament alight in more depth.
Who is Mark Allen?
Mark Allen was born in Antrim, Northern Ireland on February 22, 1986.
As a child, Allen was a very talented footballer and had trials with Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest.
He had the tough decision to make on which sport to continue with but finally decided to focus on his snooker career.
It seemed to be the right choice as by the age of 16, he had recorded his first maximum 147 break in a tournament.
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He won the Golden Waistcoat, a tournament for all the best players in the world under the age of 19.
Mark Allen began his professional career in 2003 when he joined the Challenge Tour, which at the time was the second-tier of the professional tour.
During the early stages of his career, National Lottery funding aided his participation on the tour.
He joined the main professional tour in the 2005/06 season.
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Is Mark Allen married and does he have any children?
Mark Allen married his girlfriend of two years, Kayla McGuigan, on May 10, 2013.
Sadly, the marriage broke down and the pair announced their divorcein May 2020.
Allen has two children, the first Lauren, he had with ex-girlfriend Reanne Evans.
Lauren was born in 2006 but sadly her mother and father split up in 2008.
He actually faced his his ex-girlfriend in the first round of a ranking tournament after their split.
In 2017, he had another daughter Harleigh with his then wife, Kayla McGuigan.
What are Mark Allen's biggest accomplishments?
After winning the World Amateur Championship in 2004, Allen turned pro the following year.
Despite making the latter stages of tournaments on many occasions it took some time for him to win his first ranking tournament.
In 2012, he won the World Open, getting the monkey off his back of having yet to win a title and went on to win it the following year also.
Allen then went on to win the Players' Tour Championship (PTC) in 2016.
He went on to have a successful campaign in 2018, winning the International Championship and Scottish Open.
Mark Allen won the Northern Ireland Open in 2021 and retained that title the following year.
In 2022 he won the UK Championship before following that up by claiming the World Grand Prix in 2023.
What is Mark Allen's net worth?
Despite having won over £3.5m in the sport, in 2022 Mark Allen announced that he had been forced to declare himself bankrupt.
He pointed towards his lavish lifestyle off the table as the reason he had no other choice but to take this course of action.
Allen has learnt from this experience and wishes he could go back and apply his new mindset to the way he had led his life up until this point.
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