[2][6] His first tournament was the 1964 English Amateur Snooker Championship, where he finished runner-up to Ray Reardon; the following year, he lost to Pat Houlihan in the final of the same event.

[14] After touring snooker clubs in promotion of the tobacco brand John Player, Pulman had secured sponsorship from the company for his world title challenge against Eddie Charlton in March 1968.

The correspondent for the Birmingham Daily Post praised the players for bringing a "refreshing new look to the game, with bold attacking play, wonderful potting and a sprinkling of good-sized breaks".

After surviving an incomplete round-robin stage, Spencer decisively eliminated Reardon 34–15 in the semi-finals before defeating Warren Simpson 37–29 in the final to regain the world title.

[11] Defending his second world title, Spencer eliminated Fred Davis 31–21 and Charlton 37–32, before facing championship debutant Alex Higgins in the final.

[37] The week-long final was closely balanced until Higgins won the Thursday evening session 6–0, creating a gap in the scores that Spencer seemed unlikely to overcome.

[40][c] Spencer made no excuses for his defeat, even though he was feeling exhausted and ill after a major tour of Canada, had been trapped in a lift ahead of one of the sessions, and involved in a minor car crash on the way to another.

[45] In 1973 and 1974, the British insurance company Norwich Union sponsored an invitational snooker tournament containing a mix of professional and amateur players.

Spencer won the 1974 'plate' competition—for those knocked out in the first and second rounds of the main tournament—and recorded six centuries in the process of defeating David Greaves 5–1, Dennis Taylor 9–4, Jim Meadowcroft 9–3, and Pulman 15–5 in the final.

[56] Early the same year, he won the invitational Ashton Court Country Club event, defeating Higgins 5–1 in front of a sellout crowd in the final, as well as taking the highest break prize.

Seeded eighth, he defeated Virgo 13–9 (having trailed 1–4 earlier in the match), Reardon 13–6, Pulman 18–16, and Thorburn 25–21 (recovering from an 11–15 deficit) in the final, to claim the winner's prize of £6,000.

Although documented as the first maximum break at a tournament, Spencer's 147 remains unofficial because it could not be verified; the tables at the event had pockets that were not checked against specification using official templates.

[72][d] Three years later, on 11 January 1982, when Steve Davis made the first televised 147 break at the Lada Classic tournament in Oldham's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Spencer was his onlooking opponent.

[74] In February 1979, Spencer won the Garware Paints Invitational event in Bombay, which at the time was the biggest tournament yet staged in India.

He defeated India's Arvind Savur 6–1, Patsy Fagan 6–4, Miles 6–5, and Thorburn 6–3 in the final, to take the £2,000 first prize and another £200 for the highest break (108), also claiming the 'Man of the Series' award.

He was runner-up in the 1979 Forward Chemicals Tournament, an extended event that used the old Park Drive 2000 format; Spencer lost to Reardon in the final 6–9.

[78] Broadcast by Granada TV, the final included a push-shot incident declared by the referee, Jim Thorpe, against Spencer's opponent Higgins,[79] who was fined £200 for his reaction to the controversial decision.

Crucially, he defeated Terry Griffiths in the final with the aid of a 103 break, the Welsh player having not lost any of his matches prior to that stage in the competition.

However, a few days later Spencer felt that his medication had improved his symptoms sufficiently that he could play, and he partnered with Knowles, whose own former team-mate White had decided to ally with Higgins.

[86] In April 1982, in the semi-finals of the Highland Masters in Inverness, Spencer achieved a 6–0 whitewash against Higgins (who lifted the world title just four weeks later), before losing 4–11 to Reardon in the final.

[89] In 1983, Spencer defeated Reardon 5–3 and David Taylor 5–2 in the first two rounds of the Lada Classic, securing a cheque for £6,000 (equal to the amount he had received for winning the 1977 World Championship).

[100] Ahead of the 1986 World Championship, Spencer journeyed to Scotland for some concentrated practice which helped him to qualify for the main stage of the tournament, where he met Higgins in the first round.

Sports writer Gordon Burn relates that part of Spencer's time practising in Scotland included playing a young Stephen Hendry.

"[102] After falling to a career-low 34th in the world rankings for the 1986–87 season,[33] Spencer made a break of 129 in defeating Terry Whitthread 5–2 at the British Open in February 1987.

[11] Everton wrote that in his early career, Spencer "had an attractive, attacking style based on long potting, prodigious screw shots [...] and the kind of confidence usually seen only in a much younger man.

"[6] Williams and Gadsby commented that Spencer was distinctive for his "immense zest for the sport and his perfection of a stroke few could master – the deep screw shot",[118] and his "fine judgement of lethal long-range pots, a tactic [...] considered fairly risky at the time and nothing like as common as it is today.

[123][g] Following his defeat by Mans in the 1978 World Championship, Spencer was invited by producer and Question of Sport creator Nick Hunter to try his hand at snooker commentary for the BBC, a task that he enjoyed for the next 19 years.

In his memoirs, he recalled struggling through the role before retiring back to his hotel room, and he related that he was deeply moved by the kindness of fellow commentators Ted Lowe and Ray Edmonds.

[132] Diagnosed with stomach cancer in early 2003,[133] Spencer refused to undergo chemotherapy, choosing to enjoy the rest of his life without its side effects.

[11][137] Everton concluded his review of the book with: "After a long spell of obscurity, Snooker needed new heroes and in that small cast he was at the forefront.