** EFREN REYES DOCUMENTARY -
Life Of
The Greatest Pool Player In
The Modern Pool
History **
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“
The Magician”
Efren Reyes Biography
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.
He is called
Bata, which is
Tagalog 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. He was also called Efren Bata by his colleagues as a shortcut for Efren Reyes (Ef from Efren and rey from Reyes).
#
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.
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$100,000. Reyes won the match 120-117. This was the largest single-winning purse in a pool event.
Although Strickland was the first to win the
WPA World 9-ball Championship, Reyes, in
1999, became the first to win while it was broadcast on television. This tournament was not recognized at the time by the
WPA, but Reyes was later retrospectively acknowledged as the winner of one of two world championships held in 1999. Nick Varner won the “official” world title. The two tournaments were merged for the following year, with both men listed as the champion for 1999. At the time, the Matchroom Sport-organised event in
Cardiff, Wales, was called the
World Professional Pool Championship (despite the entry of many non-professional players).
Efren Reyes posing with fan after he won a historic US$
200,000 at the
2005 IPT King of the Hill Shootout
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[3]($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.
- published: 26 Jan 2016
- views: 3088