Chapter I

And so, the legend goes something like this…

A man rushed in and shouted, “He’s got a game!” And before he could barely get those words out, chaos and madness ensued. In a scene that looked something like a bell being tolled before an impending biblical plague, the congregation made a manic dash towards the door. Tournament players watched, at first in bemusement, and later in a dispiriting sense of abandonment, as the crowd rushed away from their tables, like miners to Mokelumne River during the Gold Rush. People stood four and five rows deep around Table 25 in the far corner, with those in the back standing on chairs, boxes or anything else they could find. They were a discordant bunch. College kids with University of Tennessee hoodies. Gun-slinging cowboy types with curled moustaches and pointy-toed boots. Punk kids with earrings and spiky hair. Skinny slackers with goatees and Pink Floyd T-shirts. Professorial types with their sweater vests, blacks with combs stuck in their frizzed-out hair, latinos in faded Tommy Hilfigers and burley men with trucker hats and ZZ Top beards.

Ricky Byrd, a pool-hall owner from the Southern state of Alabama, was the challenger, and received a 9 to 3 spot. The variation would be One Pocket, $500 a game. The crowd watched in rapt silence as the Maestro stalked the table. Wrinkled baggy jeans with his favourite polo shirt tucked in, he moved hunched over, father time clearly had taken its toll. He had no front teeth and a Fu Manchu moustache, and could easily be mistaken for one of those men from the underbelly of society. A cleaner working the night shift at the subway. A homeless man rummaging through the night’s trash. A migrant worker picking corn in Nebraska.

The Maestro wins the first game, and Byrd digs into his pocket, pulls out a wad of $100 bills fastened with a rubber band, peels off five and hands them to him. When Byrd wins the second game, he hands his money to a nondescript black man, who stood against a wall wearing a Phillies baseball cap turned backwards and grey sweatpants. Trailing by one, Byrd wins the next four games. The Maestro doesn’t get up for the next game. He has had enough, and shakes his head no. He quits. Someone yells from the crowd “Play him 9–4!” But Byrd refuses to reduce his advantage. But just as the crowd was about to disperse, Byrd points to the man with the Phillies cap and says “I’ll put up five dimes ($5,000) if he plays Cliff 8–7.” The crowd held its breath as all eyes turned to the Maestro. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he stood up and said, “I play.” The crowd erupted in delirium. “I’ll take five nickels ($500) of that action” shouted someone, “I’ll take a dime!” enthused another. A small man wrote down names on a piece of paper for side bets of about $25,000.

Cliff Joyner, it turns out, was no random schmuck. Hailing from Rocky Mount North Carolina, his game was every bit as nuanced as the Maestro’s. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Cliff’s game peaked around the same time as the Maestro’s, which once prompted him to say “I love playing him. He is the only player that makes me second guess. He does to me what I do to everybody else.” The game would begin with roughly around 400 fans and fellow pros crammed on one side of the room. It would be six hours full of extraordinary tension and skill. The spectators were witness to a game of a lifetime, between two men, whom, although rated the top two One Pocket players in the world, had hardly played each other.

Cliff’s strategy was obvious. He proceeded to play a series of safeties, hoping the Maestro would become frustrated and chance a risky shot, thereby leaving the table open for Cliff to run through the balls. The Maestro however would not take the bait. He matched Cliff safety for safety, waiting, studying the table to see if he could come up with a shot that neither Cliff nor any player in the world could even conceive of. The crowd held its collective breath as the two men punched and counter-punched their way to a 6–6 tie. The Maestro would win the next game to go ahead 7–6, and in the following game Cliff would finally make a mistake, a rare weak safety. After pocketing seven balls in a row, the Maestro found himself without a shot. So, he played a safety. Cliff got to the table, looked at the layout and shot a wry smile. He checked every conceivable angle, before returning the favour with an impossible safety. The crowd couldn’t help itself, and broke into applause.

The Maestro hunched over the table, and aimed his cue at the cue ball at an angle which suggested he was attempting another safety. But alas, he hit the ball harder than he needed to, and the audience groaned in unison at the terrible mistake. The cue and the object ball went spinning around the table, hitting one cushion after another. As the path of the two balls crossed in the middle of the table, the object ball moved in a 45-degree angle. And then, as if a switch had been flicked on, it suddenly dawned on the crowd as to where the ball was heading. Pandemonium. The 400 fans jumped screaming from their seats as the object ball rolled slowly towards the Maestro’s pocket and dropped in. There was no Tiger Woods-esque upper-cut fist pumps. Only an endearing smile as he sat down and hung his head. He had just won $5,000 on a shot that no one else could ever have seen, one rivaling “The Shot” he once immortalized against Strickland.

Earlier in the day, when the hotel clerk asked his name, in his heavy Filipino accent he mumbled “Reyes.” Then someone from behind yelled out, “Just put down ‘The Magician.’”

Death by a Thousand Left Hands. Even before a scrawny kid from General Santos City would take down Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera at the Alamodome on a windy night in San Antonio, Texas, to capture my attention, another Filipino sporting icon had already held a special place in my heart. In the firmament of Philippine sports, there are three names that stand head and shoulders above everyone else. There is, of course, Manny Pacquiao, the eight-division world champion. Paeng Nepomuceno, the four-times World Cup and six-times World Ten-Pin Bowling Champion, who, in 2013, was voted the Greatest International Bowler of All Time by the prestigious Bowlers Journal International. And then, there’s Efren “Bata” Reyes. Or simply, The Magician.

Russia has chess, Kenyans run long distances, the Swiss ski and the Canadians own hockey. And Filipinos? Filipinos shoot pool.

One of the first things you see at Manila airport is the image of Efren Reyes. When you finally reach Angeles City after a two-hour taxi ride, tracking down Reyes is akin to completing a challenge in the Amazing Race. He is not exactly the kind of guy who keeps a regular schedule. But this seemingly arduous task, in many ways, provides an insight into the man and what he represents. Everybody knows, or claims to know him. Everybody can remember an unthinkable and sensational shot they saw him make. Word of mouth is how you find out where he was and where he might be. One night he might be playing a quickly arranged money game of 9-Ball in Manila. Another night he might be in Cebu playing mahjong, or another night he might be back in Angeles for cockfights. He is a true living Filipino folk hero, very much in an old-fashioned sort of way. And everybody will tell you two things about Efren: He is the best player in the world in cash games, and the most down-to-earth guy you’ll ever come across.

In a non-descript carinderia located on a muddy side street next to the famous Golden Arches, an unassuming fellow shoots the breeze with owner and lifelong friend Cezar Morales. Like many Filipinos, he has a weak spot for karaoke, and rattles off his favourite tunes, “The Way We Were,” “Only You,” “I can’t Stop Loving You.” And when he sings, his friends will tell you, his English is perfect. “You want to have a contest eating hot soup with him?” chimes in another over eager friend, “He’ll beat you! Nobody can beat him.” His life today, is not much different from when he was growing up, at least not at his home in Angeles City. He meanders around the house in flip-flops and shorts, as random chickens waddle in and out. His entourage are scattered along several rooms, drinking beer all day, playing mahjong, having hot soup eating contests and holding cockfights. A chessboard with scattered pieces is also visible, a recent passion. Reyes rarely plays pool at home, his neglected table, with drying laundry hung around it, cuts a lonely figure among a clutter of boxes in one corner.

Later in the evening, in a dim two-table pool hall behind a bus station, the man with no front teeth attempts a trick shot and a ball flies out of the table and on to the concrete floor, a miss. “Wow!” he cries, throws back his head and laughs. Dipping his favourite fried fish in some vinegar and chilli, he finally makes an intrepid statement. “At 16, I was the best player in the Philippines. By 20, (he continued with a twinkle in his eyes) nobody in the world could beat me. Even if you played perfectly, still you couldn’t beat me. I was that strong.” Does he practice? No. Filipinos love to gamble and play for money. The practice IS gambling. When you ask him when does he have the most fun, he’ll tell you it’s when he meets another hustler who doesn’t know him. “Sometimes, I meet a good player and he thinks he is hustling me. He’s stalling. I am stalling. I don’t want to show my speed.” He loves the slow burn. He loves it when his opponent looks at him like a perfidious lover when it dawns on them that they have been had, and that their money is in his pocket. During the pinnacle of his power, Efren languished in lucrative obscurity, and only turned to international tournaments as a last resort. He suffered the worst fate the game can deliver to a hustler, fame. He tried to stay ahead of the curve by trying his hand in variations such as carom ball, until he became too good at those too to find any takers. “No more way to hustle. They all know me. Even in the mountains with no electricity.”

Meanwhile in the background, the commentator’s voice crackles “He is showing in the final, just why he is one of the sport’s greatest players. He is truly, a magician.” Everyone in the pool hall looks up at the rickety old TV to watch the hazy images of a championship match on replay. Not very impressed, Reyes, waves his hand in a slight show of annoyance. “Well, I know already what will happen.” But how does it feel to be so good, that no one in the world will play against you for money unless you give them a handicap?

Efren leans his locally made cue stick; which cost him $10 at the time of purchase, and which he remarkably still uses, even though once he was offered $10,000 for it; against the wall and asks for a San Miguel beer. And then, with that endearing goofy grin says “I feel, oh like a big man!” and raises both fists into the air.

Efren Reyes was born on August 26, 1954 in Pampanga, Philippines. He was the middle son of nine children — five boys and four girls. His father, a barber, and his mother, a market vendor, struggled to support such a large family with their meagre income. Growing up dirt poor in a place like Pampanga presents a child with countless ways to go awry. But when he was five, he was sent to live with his uncle in Manila, who owned a popular pool hall called Lucky 13. Because there was another older pool player named Efren, people started calling him Efren Bata, the word Bata meaning “kid” in his native language of Tagalog. Working as a billiard attendant, Efren taught himself the basics of the game, such as positioning, how to draw, how to put an English on the ball by watching all the good players. But he also did something unbelievably astute for a kid his age, he watched all the weak players too. Because it was these players, who would unintentionally make the brilliant shots. The impossible shots that were invisible to good players, what in laymen’s term we would call flukes. He had mastered the game in his head even before he finally picked up a pool cue at the age of eight. He was not yet tall enough to see the top of the table, so he stacked up empty cases of Coca Cola, and at the same time struggled with a cue stick longer than he was. After a shot, he would move the cases around the table for his next shot. He played two hours in the morning before the hall opened, and two hours at night after it closed, and at the end of a long day of work and play, the pool table also served as his bed.

At 12, he was befriended by several rich Chinese kids, who would take him to vacations all around the Philippines, and finance him against some of the best players in the country. Once, he beat the number two guy in the country. By 15, he dropped out of school to support his family. He would often roll up to the nearby Clark Air Force Base, and hustle American GIs out of their dollars, until they stopped playing with him too. Out of opponents, he taught himself how to play three-cushion billiards, an extremely difficult variant that is played on a table with no pockets. But he got so good at this that he ran out of opponents, again. By the late 1970’s, nobody in the Philippines wanted to play against him for money. He was just too damn good. And he was still a teenager! Unable to hustle, he decided to take up a job at a comic book printing press. He would work there for a year, earning 90 pesos a month, something he could earn playing a single match. So, he went back to pool. Since none of his countrymen would play him, he decided to tour Asia. Like a vengeful bride straight out of a Tarantino movie, he kept a notebook with the names of the best pool shooters in the region, and proceeded to beat them one by one.

Chapter II

1792. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette engage in a game of billiards on the eve of the French revolution. The game requires three basic skills. The ability to make shots. The ability to control the cue ball to set up the next shot. And the intelligence to read the balls spread out on a table to determine the order of successive shots. And then there are the different variations, each requiring its own distinct set of skills. Whether it was eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball, one-pocket, straight pool, bank pool, rotation, balkline, snooker or three-cushion…Efren kicked ass in all of them. His penchant for picking up games quickly and incorporating newfound knowledge into all his games is legendary. When he won his first World Eight-Ball Championship, he had never played an international level eight-ball tournament before. In-fact, he wasn’t even familiar with the rules! He also won the first straight pool tournament he attended. “I figured, as long as I keep making balls, I’d win!” he would quip later. Stories are abound about Reyes learning to play one-pocket and almost immediately winning a tournament. And English Billiards? Efren in his own words: “In 1987, I went to Singapore to learn the rules. The Philippines team was going to play a tournament in Jakarta. I was picked to play English billiards, three-cushion and snooker. I played the best player in Singapore for two days to learn the moves. Then I went to Jakarta and won the English billiards and snooker competitions. I have a natural intelligence to understand things.”

But if you don’t want to take his words at face value, you wouldn’t have a problem finding other legends of the game who would corroborate his claims. “He created an awareness about kicking. We generally tried to hide. He made the shots. He taught us that just because you’re snookered, you don’t have to lose the game” remembers two-time player of the year Nick Varner. Mike “Captain Hook” Sigel, adds: “I used to laugh when he kicked at balls. I thought no one could do that accurately and consistently. But he knew what he was doing, and I never realized how important it was until I studied his game. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable, but I learned a lot about moving, kicking and breaking out balls from watching Efren. And when he has to switch hands, he plays better left handed than anyone I have ever seen!” Johnny “The Scorpion” Archer says: “Efren has more imagination and creativity than the rest of us. We are more basic. He takes one glance and sees it all. He knows things we don’t. A few times, he has taken shots I couldn’t even envision until he made it, and it turned out to be an easier shot than I thought it would be!” Ralf “The Kaiser” Souquet chimed in: “Three times a match he’ll take shots I don’t see. He is in a different league than the rest of us. He is the greatest player who ever lived. I like to play Efren, but I wouldn’t play him in a gambling game. No one in the world will unless he gives them a spot.”

And his most famous rival? “He’s the best I have ever seen. Period.” Earl “The Pearl” Strickland.

1985. After conquering Asia, Efren finally turned his attention to the United States. Whispers of his exploits had already reached these shores. There is this guy coming down from the mountains in Asia, who can beat any American player. Efren wasn’t too thrilled that his reputation preceded him, it would limit his chances of hustling. But he had one last trick up his sleeves, no one knew how “Efren Reyes” looked like! So, when he landed in Houston to play his first tournament, Red’s 9-Ball Open, he paid the $75 registration fee and signed his name “Cezar Morales.” Everyone assumed it was some local kid from the ‘Little Mexico’ area of Houston. Nobody bothered to pay a visit in the most obscure corner of the massive pool room/night club to witness his opening round match against some guy named Johnson. When you bring this up with Efren, he is usually laughing so hard that he is barely able to speak. “They put me in a table in the back of the room! They think I can’t play!” Johnson was trolled to a score of 10–0. He probably could have warned a few players about this mysterious “Morales”, but he was so stupefied, that he walked out of the premises dazed and confused, not even bothering to show up for his loser’s bracket match. By the time he reached the final, Reyes’ accurate jump shots, merciless safeties and mind-bending kick shots had spectators and pros alike confounded. Intrigue gave away to fervent nationalism in the final where Reyes faced Wade Crane (who ironically was also playing under an alias, Billy Johnson). Chants of “U.S.A, U.S.A” echoed through the arena, as nearly a thousand Texans turned up for the showdown. Efren’s own posse added to the circus atmosphere with chants of “Manila, Manila” and “Where’s da beef?” — a reference to a newly released and soon to be iconic Wendy’s advertisement.

Reyes of course won, and over the next three weeks, swept across the country, hustling and handing down beatings to anyone who dared challenge his “Mexican” ass. He made about $81,000, not bad for three weeks of work. And just to give you an idea of his body of work, he entered the Billiards Digest 3-Cushion Championship in Chicago. Forget that Reyes had never competed in a carom tournament, the tournament attracted players like 19-time world champion Raymond Ceulemans of Belgium. Undeterred, Reyes strolled into the arena, limbered up with a few racks of rotation and finished with a credible record of 4–2 to just miss the 12-man final round bracket. He bulldozed through the consolation bracket with a Ceulmans like average of 1.30 to win the top prize. And how did he celebrate? By racing across town to enter a rapid-fire one day 9-ball tournament featuring some of the Midwest’s top talent. He steamrolled passed the 49-player field unbeaten to claim the top prize. By the time he was finished, he would post the year’s highest winning percentage (.785) and tallied the most .900-plus AccuStats Total Performance matches (20). By the time he left, Efren had almost single handedly jump started a professional sports tour. Any tournament he entered was automatically more exciting, and players became students.

The players he beat argued among themselves about who was the better pool shooter, Cezar Morales or the legendary Efren Reyes! The disputes became fierce until they realized they had been snookered by the same guy. His cover was blown when, out of habit, he signed some autographs as Efren Reyes. Efren was promised 50% of everything he won, but his sponsor, Filipino businessman Nonie Ortega, not only stole all the money, but accused Efren of still owing him some money for food and other expenses he incurred during his stay in the States. Efren returned to the Philippines without getting a single cent.

Sadly, the hustler himself got hustled.

Efren would go through a couple of more Filipino sponsors like Chicago based insurance broker Philip Estrada, who would also rip him off. Ironically, while it was the Americans he was hustling, it wasn’t until he partnered with one that his situation would be rectified. In 1988, Efren was financed by an American named Archibald Mitchell. This time, Efren finally made and kept his money. “The American didn’t cheat me” Efren would say laughing, “Only the Filipinos!”

Gonzalo Puyat was a poor man from Pampanga who worked as a billiard attendant at a pool hall owned by a Spaniard. Before leaving the Philippines, he allowed Puyat to buy two tables on credit. Soon, Puyat started acquiring and fixing tables, and subsequently resold them at a profit. In 1912, one such table won an industrial design competition, and by 1929, the hard working Puyat became the president of the chamber of commerce and his family business grew to include steel, lumber and other products. His grandsons, Jose and Arsiteo “Putch” Puyat are now owners of the largest chain of bowling and billiard centres in the Philippines. The Puyat brothers feel a special kind of affinity to Efren, since like their grandfather he is from Pampanga, and like their grandfather Efren too started out as a billiard attendant. To them, helping Efren is akin to honouring their grandfather. In 1989, the Puyat brothers became Efren’s first real sponsors. Instead of taking cuts from his money games, they simply pay for Efren and his team’s expenses as they travel from tournament to tournament in the United States. “We don’t ask him to help us sell tables. It makes me feel that I am helping a friend, and that I am honouring my family’s roots and traditions, that I am doing something for my country” says Arsiteo. The partnership is going strong, even today.

Sitting in a bar, dark and empty, Scott “The Shot” Smith, sips on a frozen margarita. When you talk pool with one of most prominent tournament directors in the pool scene, the topic of Efren Reyes is bound to come up. “Efren? Oh boy, let me tell you. You dig up the best players of all time and put them in a room with Efren for twenty-four hours and he’ll have all their money.” What about “The Shot” in Reno against Strickland? The Scorpion (Johnny Archer) said it’s the greatest shot ever made in pool? Efren’s cue ball was behind the nine, so he couldn’t hit the object ball, the five. It was a no-escape shot. But Efren hit the cue ball off two rails before it cut in the five and gave him perfect position for the six. When you go re-watch the video on YouTube, you’ll hear the commentator say “He is in big trouble, he is in big trouble here”, and after the shot “well that’s why they call him The Magician.” Scott shakes his head when you mention that moment, “I can still see it in slow motion” he says, “all those astonished faces, even Strickland was smiling and clapping his hands at his own defeat.” “Jeanette Lee a.k.a. The Black Widow was there, and she was so overcome that she was sobbing for breath.” And with that he trailed off, he had clearly witnessed a moment in history that to him surpasses any other moment in sports. Then he regained his composure to add a final thought: “Efren is alive and well in my own time. It’s like being alive when Babe Ruth was playing. I love it.”

Immune to the political infighting that has plagued the pool world, Efren is unique in that he hasn’t an enemy on the Tour. He is a joy to watch, accepting winning and losing with the same humble shrug of the shoulders. Needless to say, he is revered by all Filipino players who have followed in his footsteps, a classic example would be Ronato “the Volcano” Alcano, who took out his front teeth to resemble his idol. Efren’s accomplishments are too many to count down, let’s just leave you with one. In 2004, when he won the WPA World Eight-Ball Championship, he became the first player in history to win world championships in two different disciplines (he previously won the nine-ball championship). When you talk to fans around the world they’ll probably tell you Strickland is the best nine-ball player, straight pool goes to Mosconi and ten-ball to perhaps Shane Van Boening. But best all-round? Efren hands down.

After a bath prior to the opening game of a tournament, Reyes will not take another until his tournament has ended. I guess even the best of them have their superstitions. He may not offer the dramatic flair of Strickland, the polished camera presence of a Johnny Archer or the rugged good looks of C.J. Wiley, but even in his 60s, Efren’s name on a tournament poster is marketing gold. There’s something about a reticent, yet completely likeable invader from another land (who happens to possess other-worldly talent) that adds a valuable degree of mystery and intrigue. Much of the romance surrounding the so called “game of rouges” has been slipping away since Paul Newman played Eddie Felson in the 1961 classic “The Hustler.” Upscale billiard rooms with loud music and video games have elbowed out the classic dark and smoky pool halls with chalk-covered floors and so called “railbird” spectators perched up against the walls. In rooms like these, you understand the line from “The Hustler” when the cashier says: “No bar, no pinball machines, no bowling alleys, just pool — nothing else.” Whether you are at one of the remaining old school pool halls you might find in the Southwest, or a local bar like Margarita Ville in Angeles City or in one of the slick rooms in Las Vegas, you are likely to hear one name spoken in mythical, one-of-a-kind tones.

Efren ‘Bata’ Reyes. The Magician.

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