KARACHI, April 4: The fourth Red & White Billiards and Nine Ball Pool Tournament will commence on Saturday at the Snooker Zone Shehnaz Arcade, Main Shaheed-e-Millat Road.

In billiards, 27 of the top billiard players in the country will be vying for the top honours, with NWFP’s gifted Saleh Mohammad top seeded and Sindh’s veteran Yousuf Haroon as the second seed.

In the Nine Ball Pool tournament which will commence on Saturday evening, 47 players are in contention with Sindh’s Shakeel Bhatti top seed and the reining snooker champion Khurram Hussain Agha, seeded at No.2.

Missing from this tournament will be Pakistan’s former world and Asian snooker amateur champion Mohammad Yousuf, former runner-up at the Nationals, Naveen Perwani and NWFP’s Arifullah.

While cueists from Sindh, Punjab and NWFP are contesting in both the tournaments, Balochistan does not have an entry in billiards or Nine Ball Pool.

Billiards is a completely different ball game than snooker. While snooker is played with 15 red, six coloured and one white ball on a green beige six legged table with six pockets, billiards on the other hand is played on the same table, but with two white and a red ball.

In snooker the white ball is used by both players as the cue ball, but unlike snooker, the two white balls are used as the cue balls in billiards. One player uses the white ball with a black spot as his cue ball and the other player uses the spotless white ball as his cue ball.

In snooker after potting a red ball the player goes for a coloured ball, then for red again and another coloured to build up his score. After all the red balls are accounted for the player then pots yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black. But in billiards the player uses his cue ball with the red which earns him three points and may be a cannon on his opponent’s cue ball earns him two more points. The cueist can continue to build up his score in trying to reach the winning target, but if he misses, his opponent takes his turn at the table.

The highest points a player can score in snooker is 147 after potting the 15 reds along with 15 black balls which makes up 120 points and then sinking the six coloured balls which amounts to another 27 points.

Over here in this billiard tournament, a set consists of 100 points and the player reaching the century mark first is the winner of the first frame.

In the early rounds right up to the quarter-finals, the game will be played in the best of three sets. The semi-final will be played in the best of five sets and the final will be in the best of seven sets.

Nine ball pool is played on a smaller table having six pockets but larger pockets than that on a snooker or billiard table. There nine coloured balls in each rack with each ball numbered from one to nine.

While breaking the rack if a player sinks the No.9 ball in his first attempt the game is over in his favour, otherwise he has to go for the coloured balls in sequence, and has to pot the No.9 ball last.

If a player sinks eight balls and misses the last ball on the table, his opponent has only to bag the No.9 to win the rack.

The first round right up to the quarter-finals, will be played in the best of seven racks. The semi-final will be played in the best of nine and the final in the best of 11.

The winner emerging in billiards will receive a handsome purse of Rs.30,000 with the runner-up receiving Rs. 15,000. The two semi-finalists will received Rs.10,000 each.

The winner, runner-up and the two semi-finalists in Nine Ball Pool, will receive the same amount.

The final of the billiard tournament will be held on April 11th from 11.00 a.m. and the pool final will be held on the same day from 4.00 p.m.

The following are vying for the spoils:

BILLIARDS: Saleh Mohammad, Yousuf Haroon, Abu Saim, Irshad Mamsa, Khurram Agha, Shah Khan, Danish Karim, Hanif Raja, Atiq Latif Bux, Minhas Malik, Aamir Ahmed, Sunny Shahani, Saqib Butt, Shahid N. Minhas, Inam-ur-Rehman, Imran Shehzad, Salman Sheikh, Mohammad Aslam, Ahmed Bawany, Masood Ahmed, Shariq Amin, Mohammad Hussain, Shakil Bhatti, Fayyaz Tanoli, Nauman Awan, Kassim A. Shah and Mukhtar Khan.

NINE BALL POOL: Shakeel Bhatti, Khurram Hussain Agha, Zain Mohammad, Nasim Paracha, Mohammad Hussain, Kamran Razzaq, Shehzad Nasim, Saleh Mohammad, Faisal Atiq, Bharat Sataini, Hanif Raja, Faisal Hussain, Atiq Latif Bux, Shahid N. Minhas, Hassan Arif, Inam ur Rehman, Sunny Shahani, Babar Rafiq, Najmur Rehman, Anwar Saeed, Shariq Amin, Umair Anwar, Shah Khan, M. Irfan, Asif Moti, Imran Shehzad, M. Waqas, Danish Karim, Salman Sheikh, Mirza Zubair Baig, Syed Messam Zaidi, Raees Khan, Sohail Shehzad, Shiraz Sheikh, Abu Saim. Yousuf Ali, Farhan Noor, Ali Shahzad Butt, Aamir Saeed, Mukhtar Khan, Jamal Ahmed, Nadeem Iqbal, Ahmed Bawany, Minhas Malik, Atif Ayub, Masood Ahmed, and Sohail Shehzad Jr.