The twenty-six entrants in this year's Championship have been drawn into six groups, with each group headed by one of the six seeded players and the rest of the participants drawn at random.

The number one seeded player is the defending champion Ahmed Aly El Sayed, who captured the title at the Prince Snooker Club in Brooklyn, NY, last year.

The top two players from each group will advance into the round of 16 in a predetermined position in the knockout stage, with the third place players from each group going into a random draw in the knockout stage.

Two of the third place players will be randomly drawn directly into the round of 16, with the four remaining third place players being randomly drawn to play two preliminary round matches. The winners of those two preliminary round matches will advance into the round of 16.

Group A
Code	Player
A1	Ahmed Aly El Sayed (New York) 1
A2	Pravin Patel (Texas)
A3	Wayne Tang (Arizona)
A4	Tim Lee (New York)
A5	Chen Yan Jun(New York)
Group B
Code	Player
B1	Jian Qiang Wang (New York) 2
B2	Alex Kopel (California)
B3	Steve Lucas (California)
B4	Cheang Ciing Yoo (Washington)
Group C
Code	Player
C1	Raymond Fung (New York) 3
C2	Tony Annigoni (California)
C3	Sim Lim (California)
C4	Romil Azemat (Arizona)
Group D
Code	Player
D1	Ajeya Prabhakar (California) 4
D2	Laszlo Kovacs (New York)
D3	Michael Chang (California)
D4	Yi Fei Mei (California)
Group E
Code	Player
E1	Tom Kollins (Illinois) 5
E2	Sridhar Shrinivasan (Pennsylvania)
E3	Zhen Yan Y. (California)
E4	Paul Chao (California)
Group F
Code	Player
F1	Henry Wong (New Jersey) 6
F2	Tommy Chen (New York)
F3	Ng Guo Ning (New York)
F4	Ernst Bezemer (Texas)
F5	Marlin Li (New York)