AT 10am on Monday morning eight men will start work in York with the intention of being considerably richer when they leave the city.

The eight will be the first players in action in the most valuable sports event ever to have taken place in York, with nearly £750,000 total prize money in the kitty.

Monday morning is the long and eagerly awaited start of the UK Snooker Championship at York's Barbican Leisure Centre, the first time the city has staged a major snooker championship and the biggest event to be held at the Barbican.

It is the second most important event on the professional snooker calendar, after the Embassy World Championship at Sheffield, and for the next two weeks all the world's best players will be here.

Four tables will be used at the same time for the best-of-13 frames first round matches and there are two sessions of play on Monday.

One of the eight cueing off in the morning will be Steve Davis, six times world champion and a legend in his lifetime.

These days Davis is not at the top of the tree, but he still enjoys playing and his ambition is to win a tournament in this decade so that he will have won titles in each of four successive decades.

On Monday he plays Stuart Pettman, a 26-year-old Lancastrian from Preston, whose best performance was reaching the World Championship semi-finals in 1997.

In the evening session, starting at 5pm, Billy Snaddon, who beat Peter Ebdon and Nigel Bond in Malta this week, is among the players in action.

Monday morning matches (start 10am): Anthony Davies v Robin Hull, Anthony Hamilton v Antony Bolsover, Steve Davis v Stuart Pettman, Dominic Dale v Michael Holt.

Monday evening (start 5pm): Billy Snaddon v Terry Murphy, Tony Drago v Gary Wilkinson, Drew Henry v Alain Robidous, James Wattana v Mark Davis.

Updated: 10:46 Saturday, December 01, 2001