Sidharth Rao makes a good start

Defending champion and top seed Devendra Joshi scored his second successive win with a 4-2 verdict against Aditya Goenka of Rajasthan. Earlier on Tuesday, he beat S Shankar for his first win.

The Asian Games billiards gold medallist Ashok Shandilya of Railways, won two matches in his group. He beat Parambir Singh of Meghalaya 4-0 in the morning and then an erratic Rupesh Shah by the same margin in the evening. Both Shandilya and Shah, essentially billiards players, missed a fair number of easy shots.

Shyam Jagtiani defeated young Omar Balsara 4-1 in the morning and then won 4-1 against Sanjay Bisht in the evening. Balsara beat Neeraj Kumar 4-1 in the evening, while S B Agarwal, who had breaks of 47 and 51 in the first and fourth frames, won 4-0 against Sanjeev Gupta.