Efren "Bata" Reyes by Ted Lerner

Efren "Bata" 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."