Bill Werbeniuk Bill would drink six or eight pints before a match of snooker and a pint each frame to alleviate a hereditary arm judder.
William Alexander Werbeniuk, or Big Bill to his friends, was a legend on the snooker table and in the bar. The Canadian born snooker giant inherited his unusual surname from his Eastern European father. He also inherited an arm tremor from his dad that lead to his inordinate alcohol intake. He even made headlines by acquiring a medical certificate that approved his lager drinking, and offsetting the cost of the booze against income tax as a necessary overhead. Due to health reasons he decided to seek medical assistance instead of relying on the medicinal value of strong lager. He started taking Inderal to stop his tremor. Sadly Inderal was placed on the Governing Body of Snookers’ list of band performance enhancing drugs. Bill had to make a tough choice. Either continue drinking and playing snooker, thus risking his health, or retire from the game. He decided to hang up his snooker queue and took up professional pool instead.
Werbeniuk's last recorded professional match was in the preliminary rounds of the 1990 World Championships: a 10-1 defeat to Nigel Bond. In the post-match interview, he declared:
“I've had 24 pints of extra strong lager and eight double vodkas and I'm still not drunk.”
Bill sadly passed away in 2003 but he will always be remembered with great fondness by snooker fans around the world.