Bill Werbeniuk

Bill Werbeniuk, who has died aged 56, was a cult hero in the world of snooker, known for his prodigious consumption of lager. Four times a quarter-finalist in the Embassy world championships at the Crucible, Sheffield, between 1978 and 1983, he achieved a career-high ranking of eighth in 1984-85. At a time when snooker was emerging as a major television attraction, he became one of the game's best loved characters.

Born in Winnipeg, Werbeniuk was the son of a Canadian professional champion and former armed robber, fence and drug dealer. He began playing snooker as a child, and spent his formative years, often with his fellow countryman Cliff Thorburn, travelling across north America playing pool for money.

Both found it refreshing to compete for cash prizes when they joined the professional circuit, although Werbeniuk's fondness for his old life resurfaced from time to time. He once won $20,000 in 10 hours playing pool. "I lost it all in the next 20 minutes," he recalled, "but there was a guy with $200,000 and I was hoping to win that as well."

Although he beat almost all the top players of his day at one time or another, Werbeniuk never won a tournament, and reached only two finals. With Thorburn and Kirk Stevens, he took special pleasure in winning the World Team Cup for Canada in 1982. Thorburn said this week: "We were great friends off the table. While everyone else was arguing among themselves, we were a unit."

Werbeniuk suffered from hypoglaecaemia, a condition which enabled his body to burn off sugar and alcohol exceptionally quickly. He was thus able to cope with drinking at least six pints of lager before a match, a pint per frame during it, and a few sociable ones afterwards. But he ballooned out to 20 stone in weight because he he thought it the best way to control the pronounced tremor he developed in his cue arm as a result of the alcohol consumption.

While playing in the 1980 World Team Cup challenge, Werbeniuk's weight was so substantial that he managed to split his trousers, live on BBC television. On another occasion, he literally drank the Scottish professional Eddie Sinclair under the snooker table by consuming 42 pints. At one stage, the inland revenue allowed his spending on lager as a tax deductible expense.

The north American champion from 1973 to 1976, Werbeniuk moved to Britain in 1978, basing himself in a converted bus in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His career ended in 1990 because he was taking the banned beta-blocker Inderal to deal with the strain of alcohol consumption on his heart. Although he maintained that he could not play without the drug - it was, he argued, not performance enhancing but performance enabling - he was fined and suspended by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.

After the ruling, he went home to Vancouver to live with his mother on disability benefits, play cards and watch sport on television. He severed all ties with snooker, except to express sporadic bitterness against the circumstances of his leaving it. His concluding years, including bankruptcy in 1991, were in sad contrast to the gregarious and stimulating times of his prime.

· William Alexander Werbeniuk, snooker player, born January 14 1947; died January 20 2003