I am pretty sure it was Dennis Orcullo who was a fisherman. (Orcullo is his real name, by the way, but in the passport they printed Orcollo by a mistake, so that's why it is sometimes used instead)
Chris managed to turn around his match from 0-4 to 3-4 with 3 break and runs, and then lead 8-7 in the end. At 8-8 he simply missed the 5 ball after all the hard work was done. He still doesn't know why he missed, he was focused, ready, did his preshot-routine, so he just missed the 5-ball, and his opponent won 9-8 instead. Sad...
After my last report I ran into Jharome again in the venue, and I asked him how did the match against Efren go. "I played very good, didn't miss a ball. 9-1" he said when smiling. I replied of course with congratulations, and then he laughed and said: "no no, I lost 9-1. I didn't miss a ball, but what can I do when Efren had 7 Break and runs? It was too much". Looks like Efren is having a good time on the tv-table...
At night we went to the poker/pool-place again. Efren was of course in action with some foreigners, just fooling around winning more pesos. Efren played them race to 9 with no handicap, so it was more like donating. Or sponsoring, like one of the Germans in the crowd said. This is what is incredible with Efren. Alcano, Django and some more of the best players were there, but everyone just wants to play Efren, and he does not dissapoint anyone. He gives them bankshots, lots of spins, his grins, headscratching, laughing and all the other things with him that makes him so likeable. He cash tens of thousands of pesos a month by doing these small exhibitions, and his popularity just increases by doing this. Because he can practise and perform crazy shots for all the Filipino spectators, while the only time the same crowd will see Alcano play it will be in a real moneymatch with a lot of pressure. He will then stay 100 % focused, and is not entertaining the crowd. I can't see how any other player ever will replace Efren's popularity. Alex Pagulayan is a funny guy, and everyone likes him over here, but he's not playing people for fun, giving of himself the same way like Efren.
After Efren's matches with the crowd, he and Alcano started a race to 15 in rotation for 100 000 pesos. Didn't watch the match closely, but when we left the score was 11-9 to Alcano, after Efren being down 6-2 and 8-4 earlier in the match.
I asked Pena if he could teach me rotation back in Manila. He laughed, raised his hand ready to give me "high five" and then said: "We can play 9-ball, I give you 8 games start to 9" and then laughed a real good laughter. Just like most of the Filipinos he's joking, laughing and smiling all the time.
Jharome is another player here who just lives for pool. Everything he does is poolrelated, and at the bar yesterday he was watching every shot of the rotationmatch, even though he had no part of the action. He is just interested in watching good pool, he might learn something.
At the hotel now. It's a great hotel here in Cebu, called Crown Regency. Here there is swimming pool, massage, poker, internet, restaurants, disco, liveband, coffeeshop + more, in the same building. It's a pity it's raining so much these days, so I haven't got a chance to see much of Cebu...
Got a text from Thorsten last night, who is playing in Palawan. He is still in, even though he struggles with his game. Ralf is also still in, but on the loserside. About 3 000 spectators watched that tournament!!! Here, in Cebu, there were about 1 000 spectators, but that was simply because there is not available space for more people.
I just got a call saying that my name was mention in the newspapers over here. "Jharome Pena demolished Roy Steffensen bla bla bla"....
There's some pretty bad weather up north in the Philippines right now, I think they have cancelled lots of ferry's and flights, and evacuated about 200 000 people. Hope it will work out ok without too many problems for the people in the area...
Time to sleep for another hour, and since the weather is so bad we will probably head for the shopping mall and the tournament again.