Is Reyes best all-around?
Sherm Adamson
Mike Hu wrote:
>
> It is the general consensus among the pro players that Reyes is
> considered to be the best all around player. Not that I'm doubting them
> or even questioning his skills, but is this unofficial title
> justisified? That is, has Reyes been playing in 8-ball, straight pool,
> one-pocket, and 3-cushion billiards lately to keep his reputation as
> best all-around player? By the way, how tall is he? I heard he uses a
> 59" cue (I use one too), but that doeosn't mean he's necesarrily tall,
> does he? He look to me like he's about 5"4" - 5'6", but it's awefully
> hard to judge height on TV.
I found this article while surfing the net in an area totally unrelated
to billiards. Thought some of you might enjoy it. BYW, Yes he is the
best all round player in the world today and probably the best ever.
8^) Sherm
This article was first published in Business World, a
national daily newspaper, on Saturday April 13th,
1996. It is reprinted here with the permission of the
author. Ted Lerner.
Working-class hero
Efren "Bata" Reyes is more than just one of the best pool
players in the world. To many, he is a living legend, writes
TED LERNER
IT IS A HOT and sunny Saturday afternoon in late March and Efren Reyes
is putting on an
exhibition.
The town is Angeles City, Efren's home town, and the place is Margarita
Ville, a popular bar and
restaurant on Field's Avenue. Efren has come here at the invitation of
his American friend, John,
the owner, for a day of some friendly pool.
The challengers today are mostly foreigners, who make up the majority of
Margarita Ville's
customers. They have lined up for a chance to take on the master, to get
their picture taken with
him, and to be able to one day say to their friends around the bar, "I
once played against Efren
Reyes, the greatest pool player in the world."
The bet for each match is P500. First man to win seven games wins the
money. Of course, Efren
has to give every challenger a major handicap. He practically gives the
game away. In 9-Ball,
where the balls have to be run consecutively until the winning nine ball
is sunk, all the opponent
has to do is sink the four, the six or the nine and he wins. And the
opponent always gets to
break. Even so, nobody expects to beat Efren.
Dressed in rolled up jeans, a short-sleeve polo shirt, and rubber
slippers, Efren, the man they call
"the magician" in the States because of his incredible shot making,
works the table. Occasionally,
he smokes a cigarette or laughs his endearing smile. One noticeable
absence is Efren's front teeth.
When he is on tour in the United States, he wears them, but when he is
at home, he likes to relax.
Methodically, he disposes of one opponent after the next. He casually,
seemingly effortlessly,
sinks shot after shot, always leaving the cue ball in perfect position
for the next shot. Often times,
he runs all nine balls without a miss.
Efren does not like to call this an exhibition. To him, he is just doing
what he has done practically
every day since he was born 41 years ago: play pool. But to the 50 or so
people gathered
around the table, and to the 30 or so others peering from the sidewalk
outside, it is as good as a
clinic. They seem to watch with a reverence.
After several hours, the bar erupts in cheers. Efren has lost to the
assistant manager, Jimmy, who
sank the nine ball off the break in the very last game. Jimmy, relishing
a moment he will never
forget, pumps his fist in the air and received high fives from his
friends. Efren, smiling, shakes
Jimmy's hand and pulls out P500.
Then, to show what his accomplishment means, Jimmy strides over to the
bar and rings the bell,
thereby obligating himself to purchase a round of drinks for the entire
establishment, a gesture
that surely must have cost him at least P2,000. And, in a further sign
of reverence and respect,
Jimmy puts his P2,500 stick into retirement, by having Efren sign the
shaft.
"Hell, I can always buy another cue," Jimmy says exuberantly. Several
other foreigners come
over and do the same thing.
Efren would go on to play for a total of six hours that night. He lost
only one other match, having
let one of the local bar girls win the last series of the night.
During a break, while Efren and his companions - his brother, a driver,
and a valet - relaxed over
cheeseburgers, fries and Cokes, I stopped over to say hello. I had met
and interviewed Efren last
year and he greeted me in his typical friendly manner. He invited me to
sit down and he offered
me his French fries.
While eating his cheeseburger he talked about going to the States again
in June for the start of the
1996 Professional Billiards Tour. He then rattled off his victories and
accomplishments from the
1995 Tour. In six months in the States, he won an incredible six
tournaments and pocketed over
$80,000. He captured the Sands Regent 9-Ball in Reno, Nevada. The
prestigious Bicycle Club
9-Ball invitational in Los Angeles, the World 8-Ball championships in
Las Vegas, the World
Straight pool championship in Bangor, Maine, the Pro-Tour championship
9-Ball in Owensboro,
Kentucky, and the Legend 9-Ball in LA. He also placed fifth at the world
championships of
9-Ball in Norfolk, Virginia. At year's end, he was also voted
International Player of the Year.
This should naturally be heady stuff for a guy who rose from Third World
poverty and who now
dominates the world's billiards scene. Efren, however, seems unaffected
by his accomplishments.
He even said his six months in the States was too long.
"I had to sign a contract with the Tour," he said. "I prefer three
months. I like it here in the
Philippines."
For it is here in the Philippines where he can get more of what he likes
most - action.
"I cannot hustle in America because they know me already. Americans
don't like big money
games. If I like action, I stay in the Philippines."
In fact, when I first met Efren Reyes a year ago, I found him playing
cards at his auntie's house in
Angeles City. It had taken me one month to track him down. He is
difficult to find. He is not the
kind of guy who keeps a regular schedule or makes regular appearances
that are published in the
newspaper. Maybe in the States when he's on tour, but not in the
Philippines. Here he is just
living and partaking of that action he loves so much. One night he might
be playing a quickly
arranged money game of 9-Ball in Bulacan, another night he might be in
Manila playing mahjong,
or another day, he might be back in Angeles in cockfights.
IN MANY WAYS, though, I found in my search for Efren Reyes, the perfect
insight into the
man and what he represents. Efren Reyes is a true, living Filipino folk
hero, very much in an old
fashioned sort of way. Word of mouth is how you find out where he was,
and where he will be.
Everybody knows, or claims to know him. Everybody can remember a
spectacular and
impossible shot they saw him make 10 or 15 years ago. Everybody
remembers a time when they
saw him do this or that.
Everybody will also tell you two things about Efren. He is the best
player in the world when it
comes to playing for money, and, he is an extremely down-to-earth,
friendly guy.
At the Hang's 'N bar in Ermita, Tony Fuster, a long-time friend of
Efren's, and a sharp pool
player in his own right, said, "When it comes to playing for money,
nobody is more focused than
Efren."
Tony directed me to a bowling and billiards center in Farmer's Plaza,
Cubao, where, as
professional pool player Bert Aleonar said, "You have the best card
players in the Philippines,
the best pool players, the best gamblers, and the best cristos (bet
takers)." This is where the
finest pool players in the Philippines gather nightly to play and gamble
for their daily bread. Efren
often stops by Farmer's to play money games.
Bert has known Efren since the 1960s, when they were both teenagers.
"He's a good friend,"
Bert said of Efren. "He's a simple, humble guy. He never judges other
people."
In Efren's hometown of Angeles, I began to find out just how laidback
the life of this hero was.
He had been keeping his pool table and hanging out and practicing
everyday at a nondescript
carinderia that has no name located on a muddy side street next to
McDonald's in Dau. Cezar
Morales, the owner and a life-long friend of Efren, said Efren had just
moved the table to his
auntie's house in Angeles.
Efren's auntie's house is a modest cinder block abode. On the covered
but open-air porch sat
Efren's pool table, on which several kids were playing. Drying laundry
hung around the table.
Boxes and clutter were everywhere. On the ground, several roosters
scurried under and around
the table.
There must have been 50 people there when I arrived. Inside the house,
several women played
cards. In another room, several men, including Efren, were engaged in
their own card game.
Efren, wearing a t-shirt, shorts and rubber slippers, was as friendly,
low-key, and unassuming as
everyone had said. I asked him if he could shoot some pool while I took
pictures. Everybody
gathered around the table to watch him practice. I am no expert, but
even the little I saw of his
play told me a lot.
The key in pool is control of the cue ball. He can do whatever he wants
with it. When he plays,
the cue ball moves around the table as if there is someone underneath
with a magnet dragging it
to the exact spot he wants it to go for the next shot. He is in total
control. He claims that he looks
three to eight shots ahead. Efren is very loose and relaxed when he
plays pool. He said he is very
focused though, that even if people are talking to him while he is
shooting, he does not hear them.
Incredibly, Efren plays with a locally made cue stick that is 20 years
old and cost him $10 at the
time. He said an American once offered him $10,000 for the cue but he
refused.
"This cue stick is worth more money to me," he said. "This stick makes a
lot of money."
One of the interesting features with Efren is his eyes. When he bends
over to line up a shot, his
eyes seem to roll partially into his head. It's a mysterious look,
almost trance-like. Like the
gunslinger taking aim. When he is not playing though, Efren has an
irresistible and endearing
smile, almost child-like.
Efren's house sits in another neighborhood about a kilometer away. Efren
bought this house with
the money he made from playing pool. Efren posed with his wife, Susan,
and their two kids, next
to the car they own. They also own a jeep. They have a third child but
the kid was just a baby
then. His parents also live in the house.
There were dozens of kids hanging around in the street outside his home.
They all know Efren
and he is obviously a hero to everyone. Looking at Efren, you would not
know it though. He is
very humble. And it is easy to think that folks in Angeles love him as
much for that, as they do for
his being a world champion.
EFREN REYES WAS born Aug. 26, 1954, in Mexico, Pampanga. He is the
middle son of
nine children - five boys and four girls.
His family was poor and his father worked as a barber. When Efren was
five years old, his family
sent him to stay with his uncle, who owned the Lucky 13 pool hall in
Avenida, Manila. Efren was
put to work as a billiard attendant. This is where he picked up the
nickname "Bata" (The Kid).
Efren did not actually pick up a pool cue until he was eight years old,
but for the first three years
at the Lucky 13, he still learned a lot about the game. Not only from
watching the hustlers, the
movie stars, and the celebrities that frequented his uncle's place, but
also from his dreams. Efren's
bed was the pool table.
"When I slept on the table, I dreamt about pool," he said. "I learned
about pool from my
dreams."
No wonder, I thought, he is nearly unbeatable. He must have learned the
incredible shots and the
impossible angles that he is famous for from all the spirits of the old
players who visited him while
he slept on the table night after night.
Then at eight years old, he began living out the dreams.
"Just to be able to shoot," he said, "I stacked cases of Coke three high
so I could play pool."
After a shot, he would move the cases around the table so he could take
another shot. Even
though his uncle did not want him to play pool, Efren would play two
hours in the morning and
two hours in the evening, when nobody was around. "I liked sleeping on
the table because when
I woke up I could play pool."
He started gambling at nine years old. At 12, several of his rich
Chinese friends, whom Efren met
at the Lucky 13, tagged him along to different places like Bulacan,
Olongapo, and Angeles for
vacations. While there, they would pick up games. The friends would
finance Efren against some
of the best players in the Philippines. Once he beat the number two guy
in the country.
"I watched all the good players and the weak players, too," he said. He
practiced every shot. He
had no teacher. "I learned the simple shots from the good players.
English, draw, follow, how to
put the cue ball in position. But what about the other shots? The good
players don't know the
invisible shots. A lot of times the weak players make these impossible
shots. I learned a lot of
trick shots from watching bad players."
He said that at 16 he was the best player in the Philippines.
"At 18, 19, 20 years old," Efren said confidently, "nobody could beat me
around the world. Even
if you could run the table everytime, still, you could not beat me. When
I was 20, I was strong."
Interestingly, he said this having never even been abroad at the time.
He realized that he had been
the best all along, when in 1985, he first went to America and finally
watched all the best players.
Efren dropped out of high school after two years in order to support his
family by playing pool.
He had financiers and he would play for maybe P100. Another source of
income was the
American GIs on nearby Clark Air Base. But he had developed a reputation
and nobody would
bet high with him.
Because he had trouble finding competition, he stopped playing pocket
billiards in 1976 to take
up carom (three cushion billiards), which used to be popular in the
Philippines. But he became so
good at carom that, like pool, nobody wanted to play him. So he returned
to pocket billiards.
He found a sponsor in 1979 and made his first trip abroad to Japan,
where he won $3,000
hustling and playing in tournaments. Six years later he made his first
trip to America.
His sponsor then was a local Filipino with connections in the States. He
wanted Efren to hustle.
By then, however, the word about Efren Reyes had reached the pool halls
of America. But
nobody in America knew what Efren looked like. So while in the States,
Efren used the name of
his friend, Cezar Morales.
He played in and won the Red 9-Ball Open in Houston, Texas, which netted
him a few thousand
dollars. Then over the next three weeks, playing big money against all
comers, Efren won
$81,000. But he never saw his promised 50% share. His financier stole
the money.
In 1986, he returned to America at the invitation of another financier,
a Filipino from Chicago.
This man also cheated Efren. In 1987, he had another financier, but they
did not get along. In
1988, Efren was financed by an American named Archibald Mitchell. This
time Efren finally
made money.
"The American didn't cheat me," Efren said laughing. "Only the
Filipinos."
It was about this time that Efren teamed up with long-time friend,
Rolando Vicente, his manager
until this day.
"Efren's a gifted guy," Rolando said. "Maybe the guy upstairs gave it to
him. Efren's the kind of
guy who creates shots that nobody knows how he did it. Also many people
cannot do in a game
what they do in practice. Efren is different. He can play in a game the
way he practices.
"He's better when he plays for money than he is at tournaments. In
tournaments, you can be
beaten because you play only one set. But for money, over the long run,
Efren's the best."
Efren explained that what makes him and so many other Filipinos so good
in pool, especially
under pressure, is the gambling.
"Because Filipinos like to gamble and play for money. They don't
practice. The practice is
gambling. A lot of pool players don't have jobs. Their job is playing
pool."
IT WAS NOT until 1989, however, that Efren finally stepped beyond the
world of hustling and
on to the international stage. Jose Puyat, the former congressman who,
among several family
businesses, also owns and operates the AMF-Puyat billiard and bowling
centers in Manila,
became Efren's first real sponsor. Puyat's sponsorship has nothing to do
with gambling. He pays
the expenses for Efren, Rolando and sometimes other members of the
Philippine team, which
Puyat formed, to travel from tournament to tournament in the United
States. Puyat has also
promoted several billiard events in the Philippines, pitting Efren
against such superstars as Nick
Varner and Johnny Archer, and Team Philippines against Team America.
Efren still gambles, but
when he does, he puts up his own money.
The pairing of Efren Reyes and Jose Puyat seems to be one of destiny.
Like Efren, Jose Puyat's
grandfather, Gonzalo Puyat, was a poor man from Pampanga who never even
went to high
school. In the early years of the century, with 18 centavos in his
pocket, Gonzalo got a job as a
billiard attendant at a pool hall owned by a Spaniard. With the Spanish
era over, the Spaniard left
for Spain. He allowed Gonzalo to buy the two tables on credit.
Soon Gonzalo started buying surplus tables, fixing them and then
reselling them. Then he started
making tables. In 1912, the Puyat table won an industrial design
competition. By 1929, Gonzalo
Puyat was the president of the chamber of commerce and the family
business grew to include
steel, lumber and other products.
So in one sense, by sponsoring Efren, Jose Puyat honors his family's
roots. But it is clear that he
also sees a chance as a promoter, to secure the legacy of a man he
recognizes as not only a true
master of his craft, but one who is also an inspiration to all his
fellow countrymen.
"My association with Efren is special," Puyat told me recently in a call
from Honolulu, where he
was vacationing. "It is very meaningful to me. Like Efren, my
grandfather is from Pampanga. Like
Efren, my grandfather started out as a billiard attendant.
"I would like to think I was a big help in his success. But there's
nothing we want in a commercial
way. We don't ask him to help us sell tables. It's the relationship. I
can feel he likes to do well for
his country. It makes me feel that I'm helping a friend, that I'm
honoring my family's roots and
tradition, that I'm doing something for my country. It's a great
privilege and it gives me great pride
and pleasure to be associated with him."
And so the legend of Efren Reyes grows and grows, not only in the
Philippines, but around the
world. Among people who play and watch pool, from local bars like
Margarita Ville in Angeles,
to the biggest tournaments in the world in places like Las Vegas and
Reno, he is already spoken
about in mythical, one-of-a-kind tones.
Perhaps American Nick Varner, the former world champion, and one of the
top players in the
world for the last ten years, said it best while in Manila last year for
a Puyat-sponsored 9-Ball
showdown with Efren, in which he would suffer a heart-pounding 15-14
games defeat. Varner
said of his opponent: "Efren has such a wonderful rhythm at the table.
He's so smooth. It's a
beautiful thing to watch and Americans love him. He's really popular in
the United States.
"He's just a phenomenal player. He doesn't have very many weaknesses in
his game. He's
phenomenal at shotmaking. There's hardly any shot on the table he can't
make. His position play
and speed control is superb. His knowledge of the pattern play is
absolutely great. And on top of
everything else, he performs really great under pressure. It's just a
hard combination to beat. He's
one of the greatest players ever to walk on this planet in my opinion."
--
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Mike Hu
BOBWHP
In article <33EA7B...@iac.net>, Sherm Adamson <sher...@iac.net>
writes (quoting an article from Business World authored by Ted Lerner):
>Incredibly, Efren plays with a locally made cue stick that is 20 years
old and cost >him $10 at the time. He said an American once offered him
$10,000 for the cue but >he refused.
>"This cue stick is worth more money to me," he said. "This stick makes a
lot of >money."
What a great write up on Efren. Thank you, Sherm, for posting it for the
rest of us.
I have heard of Efren's infamous "$10 stick". Can there be a more elegant
or simpler testimony that a players' choice of weapon is a very personal
one. Dare I say that Efren's piece of lumber might flunk the squirt test,
have an inferior splice and a loose joint?
Bob Whipple
Decatur, Georgia
Jeffrey Weiss
bob...@aol.com (BOBWHP):
> What a great write up on Efren. Thank you, Sherm, for posting it for the
> rest of us.
Yes, it was a neat story. Glad to see you're hangin' in here, Sherm (or
"Shoim" as we would say in NY).
> I have heard of Efren's infamous "$10 stick". Can there be a more elegant
> or simpler testimony that a players' choice of weapon is a very personal
> one.
Er, I'd agree that there's no more elegant testimony to the fact that a true
magician can work his magic with almost any wand. But the endpoint situations
(e.g., world-class players, and the truly incompetent) are always simple. I
think the arguments about the importance of stick performance have to do with
its effect on the play of mere mortals, especially those that are just
beginning to traverse the learning curve. These folks, by definition, do not
have Efren's knowledge base upon which to develop their personal tastes.
--
jw (NYC)
BmrScreamr
>>Incredibly, Efren plays with a locally made cue stick that is 20 years
>old and cost >him $10 at the time.
Efren is now sponsored by Meucci and is playing with their cues. He gave
a friend of mine one of his old cues and it was later stolen. She valued
it as a gift from a friend and it was a bigger loss for that reason that
because it was previouly owned by The Magician.
His switch to his sponsored cue has been kind of a funny story because he
keeps commenting that the sticks have too much power.
Jennifer