Pool Heaven

I was starstruck at the recent Negros Oriental International 9-ball tournament held at the convention center. Among the participants were Filipino cue artists Efren "Bata" Reyes, Django Bustamante, Ronnie Alcano, Alex Pagulayan and foreign pool players like Ralf Souquet, Johnny Archer, Corey Deuel, Mika Immonen, Thorsten Hohmann, and a lot more. They basically are the who's who of pool. As a matter of fact, the participants included nine former 9-ball world champions (Ralf Souquet - 1996, Johnny Archer - 1997, Kunihiko Takahashi - 1998, Efren Reyes - 1999, Mika Immonen - 2001, Thorsten Hohmann - 2003, Alex Pagulayan - 2004, Wu Chia-Ching - 2005, and Ronato Alcano - 2006.) Most of them participated in the World Pool Championship 2007 in Manila last week, and apparently, they headed straight to Dumaguete!

How big an event was it? Think of it this way. If this were basketball, the names would be legends like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain and current superstars Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. Wow!

While pool is not even close to how popular basketball is globally, Efren is considered by many as the Michael Jordan of pool. Just like Jordan transcended the game of basketball, Efren Reyes, too, transcended pool.

I've seen Efren Reyes already (back in 2005). So, the whole event was seeing all the other pool superstars, especially the foreign ones. Who would have thought the likes of Johnny Archer and Ralf Souquet would come to Dumaguete? Even more, who would have thought I'd be rubbing shoulders with them.

For many non-pool fans, they probably never knew the event existed. But for pool followers like me, it was like being part of an NBA All-Star Weekend. Among the sideshows were seeing the pool superstars walk down the boulevard and downtown, watching Django, Pagulayan, and Dennis Orcullo play poker at Honeycomb, and last year's World Champion Alcano beating local players in money games at local pool houses and then treating everyone who were watching with 'balot' (the lucky balot vendor sold out all his goods).

On my part, what I did was to print photos of the most popular pool players (in a trading-card design) with their name, monicker, country with their flag, and biggest achievement, and having each of them sign on it.


Eventually, I was able to get all the big names who were there to sign on their own personalized photo: Johnny Archer, Francisco Bustamante, Dennis Orcullo, Ronato Alcano, Alex Pagulayan, Warren Kiamco, Roberto Gomez, Yang Ching-Shun, Kunihiko Takahashi, Corey Deuel, Mika Immonen, Thorsten Hohmann, Efren Reyes, Ralf Souquet, Wu Chia Ching, Rodolfo Luat, and Lee Van Corteza.



The only noticeable stars who did not take part in the event were Earl Strickland and Fong Pang-Chao.

By the way, Alex Pagulayan eventually won the event, with a prize of $20,000. Here's Alex behind the scenes rapping:

The "Volcano" peaks at just the right time...

It is only fitting that a Filipino won the World Pool Championships the year it was first held here in the Philippines. After all, the Philippines is known as having the best pool players in the world. Many thought names like Efren Reyes or Django Bustamante would win it, but it was the lesser-known Ronnie "the Volcano" Alcano who had won it all. It just goes to show the quality of pool players in the country. We never ran out of world-class cue artists.

To think, Alcano was in the brink of elimination in the group stages when he started with two straight defeats. However, he did make it into the knock-out stages and went all the way. On his way to victory, he beat Efren Reyes, 2005 runner-up Kuo Po-cheng, and defending champion Wu Chia-ching. In the finals, he met 1996 champion Ralf Souquet from Germany and beat him 17-11. Alcano used a precision soft break throughout and it paid dividends again as he consistently made the wing ball and gained shape to make the 1 ball into the center pocket.

Alcano became the third Filipino (Efren Reyes-1999 & Alex Pagulayan-2004) to hold pool’s most coveted title.