Bata skips SEAG to become P10M richer

Efren "Bata" Reyes, who had complained of poor eyesight and begged off to play in the just-concluded SEA Games, proved to have a better vision in choosing what event to compete in when he won a whopping $200,000 purse (roughly P10.8 million) by ruling the rich IPT 2005 King of the Hill Invitational 8-ball Shootout in Orlando, Florida over the weekend.

Reyes, 51, topped the round-robin phase among the world’s finest cue masters that included the likes of Johnny Archer, Earl Strickland, Mika Immonen, Thorsten Hohmann and Ralf Souquet and fellow Filipinos Jose "Amang" Parica, Marlon Manalo and Francisco "Django" Bustamante.

Then, he outclassed last year’s champion Mike Sigel in a best-of-three finale, 2-0, to claim the richest prize ever staked in the sport.

According to AzBilliards.com, Reyes dominated Sigel early on, including an 8-0 sweep of their first match. Reyes actually had a number of dry breaks but Sigel just couldn’t find himself with a good shot to get a run started. And when he had, Sigel failed to get the momentum going.

In the second match, Reyes again raced to a 4-0 lead until he came up dry on the break in the fifth rack and Sigel negotiated a very complex table run to get on the board at 4-1.

Sigel then strung together back-to-back table runs to get back to 4-3 but got a little careless while running out the next rack and ended up giving Reyes a chance at the table which Reyes capitalized on. Sigel won the next two games to tie the score at 5-5, and then both players exchanged missed shots as the pressure mounted in the 11th game.

Reyes, however, proved steadier to go up again, 6-5, and then cruised through the final two racks for the 8-5 win. Sigel settled for the $100,000 second prize.