thumb|alt=Cliff Thorburn playing at a snooker table|[[Cliff Thorburn (pictured in 2007) took top place in the rankings.]]
thumb|alt=Steve Davis holding his cue stick, standing behind a snooker table|The [[1981 World Snooker Championship|1981 World Champion Steve Davis (pictured in 2007) was ranked second.]]
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), the governing body for professional snooker, first published official world rankings for players on the main tour for the 1976–77 season. Before this, for each tournament the defending champion was seeded first, and the previous year's runner-up second.
Players' performances in the previous three World Snooker Championships (1979, 1980 and 1981) contributed to their points total. For each of the three years, the World Champion gained five points, the runner-up received four, losing semi-finalists got three, losing quarter-finalists got two, and losers in the last-16 round received a single point. Ray Reardon, who had been ranked first in each of the five previous lists since the establishment of the rankings, was in fourth place with seven points, the same total as Dennis Taylor in fifth.
The top sixteen players in the rankings were seeded into the 32-player first round of the main competition for the 1982 World Snooker Championship. Janice Hale, a snooker reporter for The Daily Telegraph, wrote that the system, with points accumulated across three years, gave established players an advantage. Player and commentator Jack Karnehm, who had previously criticised the ranking system for not taking into consideration players' performances at tournaments other than the world championship, agreed that no fairer system had been proposed.
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center"
|+Snooker world rankings 1981/1982
! scope=col| Ranking
! scope=col| Name
! scope=col| 1979
! scope=col| 1980
! scope=col| 1981
! scope=col| Total
|-
! scope=row | 1
|data-sort-value="Thorburn, Cliff" align=left| || 1 || 5 || 3 || 9
|-
! scope=row | 2
|data-sort-value="Davis, Steve" align=left| || 1 || 2 || 5 || 8
|-
! scope=row | 3
|data-sort-value="Griffiths, Tery" align=left| || 5 || 1 || 2 || 8
|-
! scope=row | 4
|data-sort-value="Reardon, Ray" align=left| || 2 || 2 || 3 || 7
|-
! scope=row | 5
|data-sort-value="Taylor, Dennis" align=left| || 4 || 1 || 2 || 7
|-
! scope=row | 6
|data-sort-value="Mountjoy, Doug" align=left| || 1 || 1 || 4 || 6
|-
! scope=row | 7
|data-sort-value="Taylor, David" align=left| || 1 || 3 || 2 || 6
|-
! scope=row | 8
|data-sort-value="Charlton, Eddie" align=left| || 3 || 2 || 1 || 6
|-
! scope=row | 9
|data-sort-value="Werbeniuk, Bill" align=left| || 2 || 1 || 2 || 5
|-
! scope=row | 10
|data-sort-value="Stevens, Kirk" align=left| || 1 || 3 || 1 || 5
|-
! scope=row | 11
|data-sort-value="Higgins, Alex" align=left||| 2 || 4 || 1