Ace cueist Pankaj Advani will spearhead a star-studded line-up at the third Kolkata Open National Invitation Snooker Championship starting at the Bengal Rowing Club on Tuesday.
Organised by the West Bengal Billiards Association the six-day meet will also see the country's only professional snooker player and current National Snooker Champion Aditya Mehta play among others like Manan Chandra, Alok Kumar, Kamal Chawla and Dharminder Lilly.
Giving them competition will be Kolkata's cueists, led by the city's own Arjuna Awardee Sourav Kothari, and Asian Games silver medallist Brijesh Damani and the current top two exponents from Bengal - Benay Agarwal and Shoiab Khan.
Sandeep Gulati, Pushpender Singh, Shahbaaz Khan, Lucky Vatnani, Sidharth Parikh, Faisal Khan, Laxman Rawat and Manish Jain are the other stars on show.
Anil Poddar, Rajesh Tulsian, Ravi Goenka, Rohit Rajgharia, Mudit Poddar and Shreevardhan Poddar will be the players from the Bengal Rowing Club who will participate in the tournament.
The players will be divided into six groups of four players each and the top 16 will qualify for the knock-out stage.
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--IANS
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