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MGC tournament from today

Sports Reporter

Chennai: The cream of India’s snooker talent will vie for the title at the Madras Gymkhana Club all-India invitation snooker tournament, which begins here on Saturday.

The event, hosted by the club as part of its 125th anniversary, will feature as its top seed former National champion and World championship semifinalist Manan Chandra, followed in seeding by Sourav Kothari, Brijesh Damani and Kamal Chawla.

Other notable names in the fray include former Asian champion and Asian Games gold medallist Yasin Merchant, and Aditya Mehta, India’s sole representative in the professional snooker World championship, as well as former National champions Alok Kumar and Devendra Joshi and Siddharth Rao.

The local challenge will come from R. Girish, Varun Kumar, Harpreet Singh and Nadeem Ahmed, Tamil Nadu’s four top-ranked players, as well as former Asian Games gold medallist Rafath Habib.

Big prize money

The tournament offers Rs. 3.22 lakh as prize money, with the winner pocketing Rs. 1.4 lakh, said Arvind Rathnam, the president of the club. “This is the first time the club is conducting a National-level snooker tournament. It will be played in our completely refurbished snooker facility,” he added.

The only dampener ahead of the tournament was the withdrawal of former billiards World champion Rupesh Shah, said M.C. Manoj, tournament committee member, at a press meet on Friday.

In total, the tournament will feature 24 players in four groups of six each, with two from each group progressing to the quarterfinals at the end of the round-robin phase.

The group phase matches will be played over five frames, the quarterfinals over seven, the semifinals over nine, and the final on July 17 over eleven frames, said Manoj.

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