Dennis Orcollo sort of taught himself straight pool at Derby about 5 years ago. He was in our straight pool room early every morning, just practicing a bit. Then he bought some sheets and kept going. He got better and better at it.
Then he got Warren Kiamco to come in. Warren would shoot and Dennis would tell him what to do. That was ok in practice, but I had to stop them when Warren was officially going for it. Warren got better and better every year and ran a 145 last year.
This year Dennis was showing Carlo Biado some things early on. Showing him break shots. In the past, Carlo tried a little bit, but I think his high was around 70. This year his first two innings were 140 and 108.
I may have seen Lee Vann take an attempt a few years back but maybe not. Someone told him to give it a shot and we figured maybe within a few years he would be putting up good runs, too. We were surprised by how quickly he took to it.
Roberto Gomez was up there trying, too. Probably be putting up some good numbers if he keeps at it.
I think the word is out that they get a pretty good bang for their buck in our event. Lee Van got $1000 for the high run of the event, $300 for high run of the day, and $900 for getting knocked out in the first round. He bought one $100 entry for 12 tries. Dennis Orcullo got $5000 for first place, and daily prize money totaling another $300. He bought two tickets. John Schmidt bought one ticket and got $3200 for second place and $200 in daily prize money. The Europeans, Russians, and the Filipinos know about it. The younger Americans can't be bothered.
