Advani, Russell, Gilchrist and Nay Thway grabbed top four slots for knockout

The remaining eight players who got the knockout stage berth are Dhvaj Haria, Dhruv Sitwala, Rupesh Shah, Siddharth Parikh, Sourav Kothari and Brijesh Damani from Indian; Robert Hall (England) and Aung Htay (Myanmar)

Today Mike Russell and Peter Gilchrist played last two matches of their respective groups of round robin stage where Mike won both, and Gilchrist won the first match against Dhruv Sitwala of India but lost to Chit Ko Ko of Myanmar.

Russell was down by one game and 103 points when Rupesh gave a chance, which Russell converted into the game winning break of 148 points. Starting up from there, he shown excellence of top-table floating white game of billiards.

Though he missed on 97 in next game, which Rupesh capitalized with a break of 104, but again he came up with another brilliant break of 151 points to set decider.

In decider Russell countered Rupesh’s lead of 81 points with a break of 96 points but when he reached on 145, missed a cannon. The gap was wide and soon he got another chance to clear-up remaining 5 points and secure his win.

His second match of the day gave him straight 3-nil win against Aiden Murray of Ireland. Russell scored three consecutive breaks of 138, 108 and 136 to stay group topper and obtained second seed for the knockouts.

Multiple time world champion Peter Gilchrist of Singapore had a mixed day. The morning session match he won against former Asian Champion Dhruv Sitwala 3-2 but couldn’t save his next match where Chit Ko Ko of Myanmar defeated him 3-2.

The match was interesting as Chit Ko Ko required to win 3-0 to qualify for knockout stage, but failed to save two games, which doesn’t allow him to enter last-12.

Though Gilchrist lost that match but it doesn’t affect his qualification as third seed.

The fourth seed Nay Thway Oo also performed exceptionally well with his win over former Asian Champion Sourav Kothari of India 3-2.

After losing first game, he took the charge and made a comeback with two worthy breaks of 90 and 116 to take lead of 2 games to 1. Even in fourth game he scored a break off 96 points but Sourav countered him well with small and effective break of 54 points to set decider.

In decider, Nay Thway Oo posted two breaks of 69 and 50 points to confirm his fourth seed place.

The four matches of last 12 stage are scheduled tonight at 1800 hours (local time) with the quarter finals tomorrow morning.