Ranking Snooker event in Karachi from May 28

KARACHI: A total of 38 cueists from all over the country will be participating in the Jubilee Insurance 2nd Ranking Snooker Championship 2016 due to be held here at from May 28 to June 4.

The details about the eight-day event, offering cash rewards of Rs 165,000, were unveiled jointly by Alamagir Shaikh, President, Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), and Tahir Ahmed, Managing Director, Jubilee General Insurance, in a media briefing here at Karachi Gymkhana on Monday.

It was revealed that originally the tournament was to be restricted to the top 32 ranked cueists but the number of entries were raised upon in order to accommodate some of the fringe players as well as a couple of juniors.

The winner of the Ranking Snooker Championship will be collecting a purse of Rs 70,000 while the runner-up will be receiving Rs 40,000. The losing semifinalist and the losing quarter-finalists will be compensated with Rs 15,000 each and Rs 5,000 each respectively while the highest break award will fetch Rs 5,000.

As far as the format of the event is concerned, the 38 participating cueists have been divided into eight groups for the preliminary rounds, to be spread over four days, whose matches will be best of seven frame contests.

At the end of the league matches, the top two cueists from each of the eight groups will reach the knockout stage starting with the pre-quarter-finals, to be best of nine frame encounters. The semifinals will be best of11 frame affairs with the final to be a best-of-15 frame duel. Both the semifinals as well as the final will be telecast live on Geo Super.

The eight seeded cueists in the Ranking Snooker Championship are Mohammad Bilal, Sohail Shahzad, Mohammad Asif, Babar Masih, Mohammad Sajjad, Shahram Changezi, Asjad Iqbal and Abdul Jawed.