The inaugural Reyes Cup

The best pool players of Asia and Europe battled in Manila this week for the inaugural Reyes Cup, the latest event of the Matchroom World Nine-ball Tour (WNT), in partnership with Puyat Sports and Skysports.

The Reyes Cup is named, of course, for our very own Efren “Bata” Reyes, aka “The Magician.” It is Asia’s version of the Mosconi Cup, an annual battle between Team USA and Team Europe, named after Willie Mosconi, the great American pool player, who coached actor Paul Newman in the film “The Hustler.” The Mosconi Cup is now 30 years old.

The teams contending the Reyes Cup. Team Asia includes Bata Reyes himself, as (non-playing) captain, and Carlo Biado and Johann Chua (Philippines), Aloysius Yapp (Singapore), Ko Pin-Yi (Taiwan), and Duong Quoc Hoang (Vietnam) as members. They are all seasoned players, who have won international tourneys.

Team Europe has Karl Boyes (England) as captain, and Eklent Kaci (Albania), Mickey Krause (Denmark), Jayson Shaw (Scotland), and David Alcaide and Francisco Sanchez Ruiz (Spain) as members. They are all champion players. Since Europe won the last four Mosconis, from 2020 to 2023, many observers favored it to win the first Reyes Cup.

Team Asia forges ahead. The Reyes Cup matches involve team play, singles and doubles; each match is a race to 5. Last Tuesday, the ending score of Team Asia versus Team Europe was a very close 3-2 in terms of matches won, with Asia taking the fifth match on a hill-hill point.

The play is excellent, not only in the potting but also in the safeties. It’s the safeties that bear closer watching, to learn how champions play. One miss, either in potting or hiding, and you die.

On Wednesday, however, Asia blanked Europe 4-0, and made the match-score balloon to 7-2. Then, on Thursday, Asia edged Europe 2-1, which raised its lead to 9-3 out of 12 matches so far. The Reyes Cup is a race to 11, so that made it only two wins to go for Team Asia. We shall see tonight (I write this on Friday morning) whether Team Europe can catch up; the Reyes Cup is for 21 matches if necessary.

“Majored in economics, minored in billiards.” That’s how I describe my college years at UP Diliman. In my junior and senior years, I played about 15 hours a week at the campus billiard hall, which charged two centavos a minute for the use of the Puyat-brand tables. I played for table time, not cash, surviving on my pay as a Philippine Collegian reporter (starting at P6 per week and eventually P12 per week, whereas the editor got P30 a week). There was a carom table (Puyat also) at Vinzons Hall; for free, but fewer players due to lack of excitement. Among campus nerds, I played the best billiards.

I’ve continued to play and follow billiards, taking advantage of my friendship with the Puyat brothers, Jose “Popit” and Aristeo “Putch,” the godfathers of the Philippine game. I was invited by Popit to join him in Hong Kong to watch Bata play Earl Strickland in a race to 120 for $100,000, but declined, which I regret now. Later he narrated how Bata was 30 racks down due to feeling cold, but, thanks to the loan of Popit’s barong tagalog undershirt, on the second day he caught up and won.

Bata Reyes, greatest of all time. Honoring Bata Reyes by naming an international tourney after him is way overdue. Just look up Wikipedia for his amazing record. The wiki references include my old Social Climate column, “Pinoys in billiards’ best” (Manila Standard, 9/2/1996).

What has most impressed me is Bata’s record at the Derby City Classic, an annual competition that brings in hundreds of professionals from all over. Each Derby has four winners: one each for nine-ball, bank pool, and one-pocket, and then an overall winner, the Master of the Table (MOT), for a $20,000 bonus. In the whole Derby record, Bata has 13 wins—six one-pockets, five MOTs, and two nine-balls. A distant second-placer to Bata is Shane Van Boening with eight wins. For his six wins at one-pocket—the most difficult event—Billiards Digest calls Bata the greatest one-pocket player of all time.

Other MOT winners are Dennis Orcullo and Django Bustamante (three each), Alex Pagulayan, a Filipino from Canada, with two wins, and Amang Parica with one win. There are two Americans with two wins each and seven others with one win each. A total of 14 of the 25 MOT prizes have gone to Filipinos, and it was Bata Reyes who started it.

Since 2006, there has been a World Cup of Pool, specifically for doubles play. It was won twice by Bata/Django, once by Dennis Orcullo/Lee Van Corteza, and once by James Aranas/Johann Chua. No other country has as many wins.

The game has changed a lot in the Philippines. Long ago it was all rotation; now there’s nine-, eight-, and 10-ball. There used to be many carom players; now there are few. This used to be only a man’s game; now there are women, and world champions, too, like Rubilen Amit and Chezka Centeno. And every one of them has learned from Bata Reyes.

Bata Reyes is not alone among Filipino billiards champions. More have come up, and more are on the way; they are all part of Bata’s legacy.

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