New Delhi: Ritesh Shabani and Piyush Kushwaha posted 3-0 wins over Amit Verma and Nitish Sharma, respectively, in the first round of the qualifying event of the SBA Open-cum-Invitational Snooker tournament at the Professional Billiards hall at Kirti Nagar, here today.

But Akash Wadhwani, Rohit Arora, Sumesh Turki and Raghav Agarwal, though all of them won against their rivals, it was not a completely onesided affair as all the four players conceded a game each to their rivals on the opening day of the 9-day long tournament, conducted by the Delhi Billiards and Snooker Association.

Wadhwani began really well scoring 63-29 in the first frame, only to lose thenext very closely at 44-46. After that frame’s loss, he never looked back as he went on to win 63-29, 44046, 46-36, 48-36. Arora was on rampage to begin with and took the first two frames before losing one to his rival. However, he picked up the threads from where he left off in the second to close out Akshay Rehani 67-32, 67-37, 8-49, 64-22. Agarwal too began on a losing note before beating Anuj Nayyar 19-48, 55-46, 61-47, 62-43.

As for Sumit Turki, he began with a 21-40 loss in the first frame before regrouping himself to take the next three frames at 62-15,60-11, 60-16 to give a real thrashing to Vivek Khandelwal.

A dozen more qualifications matches on the day are scheduled and they could go on beyond 8 p.m.