Top cueists to vie for National Snooker crown

KARACHI: As many as 45 cueists, representing all the four provinces besides the federal capital, will be taking part in the Jubilee Insurance 40th National Snooker Championship 2015, which will be getting underway here at the Movenpick Hotel on Saturday.
The details of the tournament — offering a prize purse of over Rs2,50,000 — were unveiled by Alamgir Shaikh, President, Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), and Tahir Ahmed, Managing Director, Jubilee General Insurance, in a media briefing here at the Karachi Gymkhana on Tuesday.
Babar Masih, who missed out from the list of top 16 cueists at the end of the last year and was also unable to qualify from the Punjab Cup, has been granted a wild card entry in the tournament on the basis of his past performances.
The top 16 have been given direct entry into the Nationals while six cueists each have qualified on the basis of their efforts in the Punjab Cup, the Sindh Cup and the Khyber Pakhthunkhwa Cup while four and two cueists have made it to the line-up from the Balochistan Cup and the Islamabad Cup respectively.
The PBSA has allowed all the four semi-finalists of the recently concluded 7th National Junior (Under-21) Snooker Championship 2015, Mohammad Fahim, Abdul Rahim, Aamir Tariq and Mohammad Nouman Iqbal.
The 45 participating cueists have been divided in eight groups for the preliminary round matches which will continue for six days on a trot. The top two cueists from each group will be advancing to the knockout stage of the tournament, starting with the pre-quarter-finals on February 6.
The quarter-finals on February 7 will be followed by semi-finals on February 8 with the best of 15-frame final to be held on February 9.
Both the semi-finals as well as the final will be telecast live on Geo Super.
The winner of the Nationals 2015 will be collecting a purse of Rs 80,000 while the runner-up will be getting Rs 50,000. The losing semi-finalists will be receiving Rs 20,000 each and the losing pre-quarter-finalists will be compensated with Rs 8,000 each while the highest break award will fetch Rs 10,000 in cash.
Besides taking the lion’s share in the prizemoney, the finalists will also have the added incentive of claiming berths in the 31st ACBS Asian Snooker Championship 2015 to be held in Malaysia later this year.
Seven of the eight seeded cueists Mohammad Sajjad, Imran Shahzad, Hamza Akbar, Asif Toba, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Majid Ali and Hamza Akbar, hail from Punjab with Abdul Sattar being the lone representative of Sindh there. It may be recalled that Asif Toba had annexed the crown last year by overpowering Hamza Akbar in the final.
The Nationals will be the first of the three national ranking tournaments that the PBSA has planned to hold during the current year. It will be followed by the 7th NBP Snooker Cup in April and the Langnese Ranking Snooker Championship in October.