Efren Manalang Reyes,
OLD,
PLH (born August 26, 1954) is a
Filipino professional
pool player and a two-time world champion.
Biography
Early life
Reyes was born in
Pampanga in 1954.
He moved to
Manila
with his family at the age of 5.
In Manila, he worked as a billiards
attendant at his uncle's billiards hall, where he started learning the
various cue sports.
Because he was not tall enough to reach the pool
table, he played while standing on Coca-cola cases that he moved around.
At night, while he was dreaming of playing pool, the pool table was his
bed.
[citation needed]
He is called
Bata, which is Filipino for "Kid", because there
was another older pool player named Efren when he was young. To
distinguish between the two, he was referred to as Efren
Bata.
Career
Gambling from a young age, Reyes played
three cushion billiards
in the 1960s and 1970s.
After establishing himself as a winner, he was
discovered by promoters.
This gave him the opportunity to compete in big
time tournaments.
During the 1980s, when Reyes was considered a top-class player in his
homeland but not yet internationally recognized, he went to the U.S. to
hustle.
Popular legend claims that Reyes earned
US$80,000 in a week; this feat made him a folk hero back home.
[1]
Reyes began winning a number of tournaments in the U.S., Europe and
parts of Asia. Thus, he started to gain attention and recognition
worldwide.
At the start of his career, he used aliases to hide his
identity so he would be allowed to compete.
By the mid-1990s, he had
become one of the elite players of the Philippines, alongside
Jose Parica and
Francisco Bustamante.
Reyes' fame began when he won the US Open Nine Ball Championship in 1994 by defeating
Nick Varner in the finals. He was the first non-American to win the event.
Two years later, Efren Reyes and
Earl Strickland were chosen to face each other in an event called the Color of Money, named after the
movie.
The event was a three-day race-to-120 challenge match of 9-ball. It was
held in Hong Kong, with a winner-take-all prize of US$100,000. Reyes
won the match 120-117.
This was the largest single-winning purse in a
pool event.
[citation needed]
Although Strickland was the first to win the
WPA World 9-ball Championship,
Reyes, in 1999, became the first to win while it was broadcast on
television.
This tournament was not recognized at the time by the WPA,
but Reyes was later retrospectively acknowledged as the winner of one of
two world championships held in 1999.
Efren Reyes posing with fan after he won a historic US$200,000 at the 2005 IPT King of the Hill Shootout
Nick Varner won the "official"
world title. The two tournaments were merged for the following year,
with both men listed as the champion for 1999.
At the time, the
Matchroom Sport-organised event in
Cardiff,
Wales, was called the World
Professional Pool Championship (despite the entry of many non-professional players).
In 2001, Reyes won the International Billiard Tournament. The event was held in
Tokyo, with over 700 players and a total purse of
¥100M ($850K).
Reyes dominated the event and beat
Niels Feijen in the finals 15-7 and earned the ¥20M
[2] ($170K) first prize. At the time, this was the biggest first prize in a pool tournament.
In 2002 he won the $50K winner-take-all
International Challenge of Champions, defeating Mika Immonen in a deciding rack after both players split sets.
[3]
Near the end of 2004, Reyes beat
Marlon Manalo to become the first-ever
WPA World Eight Ball Champion.
With the win, he became the first player in WPA history to win world championships in two different disciplines.
In December 2005, Reyes won the
IPT King of the Hill 8-Ball Shootout.
Reyes won a record-breaking $200K for first place by beating fellow Hall of Fame member
Mike "the Mouth" Sigel two sets to none (8-0 and 8-5).
In 2006, Reyes and
Francisco Bustamante represented their country as Team Philippines in the inaugural World Cup of Pool.
They defeated Team USA,
Earl Strickland and
Rodney Morris, to capture the title.
That same year, Reyes won the
IPT World Open Eight-ball Championship
over Rodney Morris 8-6.
He earned $500K which was the largest prize
money tournament in the history of pocket billiards. Unfortunately, due
to IPT's financial problems, he has not been able to claim much of this
money as of 2007.
[citation needed]
In 2009, the Filipino tandem of Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante
beat the German pair of Ralf Souquet and Thorsten Hohmann by a grueling
11-9 score to take their second championship title.
This, together with
the semifinal finish of the other Filipino team of
Ronato Alcano and
Dennis Orcollo, was the best performance by a host nation in the tournament's history.
In 2010, Reyes clinched his fifth title in the 12th annual Derby City
Classic as the overall champion, making him the most successful player
in the tournament's history.
He has topped the AZ Billiards Money List five times: in 2001,
[4] 2002,
[5] 2004,
[6] 2005
[7] and 2006.
[8]
In 2006, he set a record by earning $646K in a single year.
Nicknames and aliases
Reyes is often called by his nickname "
Bata" (
Filipino for "Kid"), given to him by friends at his regular
pool hall to distinguish him from an older Efren.
Reyes, along with the other "Filipino invasion" players
revolutionized the way pool is played by their introduction to the sport
of pinpoint precision kicking (going into a rail with the cue ball and
then hitting an object ball).
Reyes' ability to "kick safe" and to kick
balls into intended pockets is legendary.
This ability, coupled with his
superb skill at other aspects of the game, led U.S. professionals to
give him the appellation "The Magician."
Before Reyes and his
compatriots came over to the U.S., no one there had seen anything like
their kicking skill set.
[14]
"[The] first time I came over to the states, I used an alias of Cesar
Morales. Pool players in the US already knew Efren Reyes as a great
shooter from the Philippines, but they [hadn't]...seen...[me]...in
person." — Efren Reyes
[15]
Source: Wikipedia.org
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