Sethi, Advani to play invitational billiards

Bangalore - Former World champions Geet Sethi and Pankaj Advani are among the 10 invited players who will participate in the ECA 14th G. Raman Nair handicap billiards tournament, the preliminary rounds of which commenced here Monday.

As per the draw that was officially released to the media here Tuesday, the 10 invitees will be joined by six qualifiers for the super league that has four groups of four players each. The two top players from each of the four groups will qualify for the knock-out stage on conclusion of the league phase.

Besides Sethi and Advani, the others to be invited for the tournament that will be played on a 150-up format, include: Dhruv Sitwala (Maharashtra), R Uma Devi (Karnataka), Balachandra Bhaskar (Karnataka), V Subramanian (Maharashtra), Vishal Madan (Maharashtraa), Aparajit Mittal (host privilege), Sasha Sambi (host privilege) and D Rajkumar (Karnataka).

The tournament, which concludes June 22, offers Rs One Lakh in prize-money with the winner receiving Rs 35,000 and the runner-up Rs 25,000.