Altamash Saifi of Delhi and Aditya Agrawal of Railways scored contrasting wins to enter the knock out pre-quarterfinals of the Rs 1.89 lakh NSCI-BoI All India 9-Ball Open Pool tournament yesterday.

Saifi overcame local cueist Hitesh Kotwani of the Cricket Club of India and Chetan Chabbra of Hyderabad with identical 5-4 winning margin before prevailing over Faisal Khan of Railways 5-3 and qualify from Group D as the topper. Faisal finished second.