India's Chess Grandmaster and former World champion Viswanathan Anand was the chief guest of the launch of the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT), the country's newest franchise sports league, which kicked off later on Thursday with the first tie between RP-SG Mavericks and Falcons TTC here at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium.
"This is the biggest league to happen in India for table tennis and I think it will be a great boost to the sport in the country," Anand said at the sidelines of the inauguration event.
Also present at the inauguration was league promoters Vita Dani and Niraj Bajaj.
The league is being played in an interesting format where each team will play nine matches in a tie with each match comprising 3 games. Consequently, each tie shall comprise 27 games.
Each game will have players competing with each other to score 11 points first, meaning in the event that scores are level at 10-all then the 11th point will be a Golden Point and shall decide the winner.
Whichever individual/pair scores 11 points and is termed as the winner of each game shall receive one point towards the team's total for each such game that is won. The winning team in a tie shall be decided by the number of total games won i.e. total points won in the relevant tie.
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The team that wins 14 or more games out of the 27 games shall be the winner of that respective tie. The top four teams from the league table will qualify for the play-off ties. The play-off ties will comprise two semi-finals. The victorious team from each of the semi-finals shall compete in the final to determine the UTT champions for the inaugural season.
Each franchise is comprising of a combination of overseas and Indian players- four men and four women, along with one Indian and one international coach each.