The Masters Qualifying Event was a professional snooker tournament, which ran from 1990 to 2009. Each season, the winner of the event was awarded a wild-card to play at the Masters.
History
At the 1990 Masters two wild-cards were added to the tournament and the following season a qualifying tournament was established for one of these wild-cards. The tournament was named Benson & Hedges Championship. The event was held in Glasgow and Alan McManus became the inaugural champion.
In the 1992/1993 season it became one of the minor-ranking events along with the three Strachan Challenge events. These events carried one-tenth of the ranking points of other tournaments. However, most of the top players did not enter, so it lost ranking status from the next season. The event was then moved to Edinburgh in 1994/1995 for three years, to Malvern in 1997/1998 for four years and to Mansfield in 2001/2002 for two years. There was one further maximum break by Terry Murphy against Robert Thallon but it was not officially ratified due to the match being played on one of the outside non-templated tables.