Kothari won the five-hour marathon best-of-nine frames semi-final 69-60 53-22 55-64 39-63 55-77 57-20 61-29 21-65 65-36 to make a surprise entry into the championship round.
He awaits the winner of the other semi-final between India No 1 Aditya Mehta and double Asian champion Yasin Merchant in the final, to be held tomorrow.
In a contest that was full of twists and turns, Kothari got off to a fine start and took a 2-0 lead while opening up with a break of 69 in the first frame after trailing 0-60.
That effort inspired him to enhance the lead and put Chawla under early pressure.
But the experienced Chawla bounced back to surge to a 3-2 lead with brilliant potting and positioning.
Though Kothari came back to snatch a 4-3 lead, an unperturbed Chawla forced a decider with a significant early break of 47 in the crucial eighth frame that ended prematurely when he missed a simple red. Kothari replied with a break of 21 until he too missed the red in the centre.
An early break of 26 in the deciding ninth frame helped Chawla, who defeated Manish Jain of West Bengal 4-1 in the quarterfinals, to a 36-30 lead with three reds and the colours remaining.
But his fortunes changed with an unfortunate red in-off that allowed a cautious and careful Kothari, who ousted Indian Oil's Brijesh Damani 3-2 in the quarters, to fire a well constructed break of 35 to snatch the frame and match on the pink. PTI SSR ABC AH
