Pankaj Advani to take part in All India Snooker Open; Prize money of Rs 18.5 lakhs at stake

Multiple-time world champion Pankaj Advani will be among the prominent names to take part in the All India Snooker Open to be organised at the National Sports Club of India here from January 6-19.

The tournament, named Baulkline 3.0, has a prize money of Rs 18.5 lakhs and will also feature last year's winner Laxman Rawat, runner-up Aditya Mehta and national champion Saurav Kothari, who won the inaugural edition in 2022.

Several other snooker players from across the country will also compete in the tournament.

The tournament will start with the qualifying draw with 32 players joining 32 direct participants in the main draw.

The main draw will commence on January 13.

Prominent names in the qualifying draw are Sparsh Pherwani, Mahesh Jagdale, Rovin D'Souza, Nitesh Madan, Hasan Badami, Shivam Arora and Siddharth Parikh.

Dhvaj Haria, Vishwajeet Mohan, Anuj Uppal, Subrat Das, Vijay Nichani, Piyush Kushwa, Shahbaaz Adil Khan, Hrithik Jain and Girish Rajasekar are also set to feature in the qualifying draw.

The winner of the competition will get Rs 5 lakh while the runner-up will get Rs 2.5 lakh.

The losing semi-finalists will each receive Rs 1 lakh, while the four losing quarter-finalists will get Rs 50,000 each. PTI DDV AM DDV AM AM