He turned professional in 1946, shortly after winning the English Amateur Championship, and achieved three News of the World Snooker Tournament titles, in 1954, 1957 and 1958.

[3] In 1929, Ernest Pulman sold his bakery and confectionery business, and the family moved to Plymouth, where he bought a billiard hall with two tables.

[6] In 1938, Pulman entered the British Boys Billiards Championship but left his cue on the train on his way to the event at Burroughes Hall.

[4] During World War II, Pulman was enlisted in the army for three months, making wings for Spitfires, before being discharged on medical grounds; he later told journalist Terry Smith that he had varicose veins.

[6][12] Working as an income tax clerk, he took the decision to become a professional player shortly after the championship, having taken advice from Joe Davis, the reigning World Champion.

[14] At the start of his professional career, Pulman was living at the home of his patron Bill Lampard, who was a baker from Bristol and a member of the Billiards Association and Control Council (BA&CC).

[15] Snooker historian Clive Everton alleges that this arrangement ended after Pulman was discovered in bed with Lampard's wife.

[15] Pulman practised playing snooker for eight hours a day over several years, in pursuit of a level of consistency that would bring him to the standard of the top professionals.

[20][21] He also participated in the annual News of the World Snooker Tournament, which was a round-robin event with points handicaps applied, first staged in 1949/1950.

[23] He defeated Rex Williams 22–15 in the quarter-finals and Alec Brown 37–24 in the semi-finals before losing 35–38 to Fred Davis in the final, which was played at Blackpool Tower Circus.

[30] In preference to finding an alternative career, Pulman continued to play exhibition matches, despite the limited income he was able to earn from this.

[32][33] Williams was the driving force behind the revival of the World Snooker Championship in 1964, obtaining sanction for the competition after an approach to the BA&CC chairman Harold Phillips.

[41] In March 1965, Pulman retained his title in a final-frame decider by defeating his challenger Fred Davis, 37–36, winning the last two frames from 35–36 behind.

At one of the venues, where there were no spectators present, the players reportedly spun a coin to determine the winner, instead of playing the match.

[17] In 1967, Pulman had spent time touring snooker clubs across the Midlands doing promotional work for the tobacco brand John Player,[45][46] and in turn the company sponsored his 1968 world title challenge match against Eddie Charlton.

[47] The good attendances for the Pulman/Charlton match led to John Player's decision to sponsor the 1969 World Snooker Championship as a knockout tournament.

[49] He reached the final of the 1970 World Championship but lost 33–37 to Ray Reardon, having earlier recovered from 14–27 behind to almost draw level at 33–34.

[49] The following year, he failed to qualify from the round-robin stages that determined the semi-finalists, and in 1972 he lost 23–31 to the eventual champion Alex Higgins in the quarter-finals.

[44][49] In October 1972, he was rescued, unconscious, from a road traffic collision, but he fully recovered in time to play in the Park Drive 2000 tournament that was held less than two weeks later.

[50][51] That December, he was runner-up to Higgins in the 1972 Ford Series Tournament, an invitational event with four world champions in competition.

[53] Pulman did not progress to the quarter-final stage of the World Championship again until 1977, the first time the event was held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

[64] At 6 feet 2 inches (188 cm), Pulman was unusually tall among the leading players of the 1940s, and adapted a stance where his legs were relatively close together, meaning that more weight was transferred to his back foot than was typical among professionals.

[16] In their 2005 book Masters of the Baize, Luke Williams and Paul Gadsby commented that Pulman "suffered the unenviable fate of being world champion for the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968 in which professional snooker all but died".