09 March 2013: Raheja upsets Dahiya on Day 1 of Snooker Masters North Zone C'ship

Siddharth Raheja came out all guns blazing to score an upset 3-1 win over former sub-junior national champion, Lalit Dahiya on the opening day of the RKG Snooker Masters North Zone championship in Dwarka.

Raheja reigned supreme on the green baize and reduced Dahiya, the 13th seed in the championship, to a mere spectator on Day 1 at the Megapool Academy. Raheja was in his elements today as he walked out of the arena all smiling.

In other matches, Hitesh Sethi defeated Tarun Agarwal 3-2 while Shrenik Jain comfortably beat Jyotirmay Pant 3-0.

Manmeet Bhatia of Megapool Academy won a hard-fought contest against Tejandra Choudhary 3-2. Harpreet Singh beat Azim Khan 3-1 while Pulkit Thupral put paid to the hopes of Amit Chaudhary by an identical margin.

India's top cueists, Sourav Kothari, Sandeep Gulati and Dhruv Sitwala among others, will play their respective tournament openers on March 14. The event is a build-up to the RKG-Khar Gymkhana Snooker Masters 2013, India's biggest Pro-Am Snooker tournament, from May 6 to 13 in Mumbai.

The tournament is sponsored by former vice president of Delhi Billiards & Snooker Association, Ravindra Gupta, and will boast of four top UK professionals and an equal number of Indian amateurs -- Pankaj Advani, Aditya Mehta, Yasin Merchant and Alok Kumar.

The prize money is the biggest offered in India at Rs 22 lakh.