Orcollo, Kiamco on course for billiards gold

KUALA LUMPUR – Dennis Orcollo and Warren Kiamco, two of the country’s finest cue artists with five SEA Games titles between them, assured themselves of at least a bronze as they stamped their class on their Malaysian rivals in a 9-ball doubles quarterfinals face-off at the KLCC Hall 4 here yesterday.

Legendary Filipino pool player Efren “Bata” Reyes, however, still just couldn’t make a breakthrough in English Billiards, dropping out of contention right after their first match in the doubles event.

Reyes and partner Francisco dela Cruz were bundled out by their Vietnamese rivals, 90-100, 33-100, 72-100.

Orcollo and Kiamco saved the day for Team Phl as they trounced Ibrahim Bin Amir and Chooi Yew Wah, 9-6, to move to the semifinal round.

The Philippines is the titleholder in this event won by Kiamco in partnership with Carlo Biado in Singapore in 2015.

Orcollo has also won this event in 2005 with Alex Pagulayan as his partner before ruling one by one the eight-ball singles (2011), the 10-ball singles (2013) and the nine-ball singles (2015) to complete a SEAG grand slam in pool singles.

Orcollo and Kiamco are fancied to go all the way to win another the gold here.

“Our pool players today are better than me. That’s why they’re the ones playing (in billiards). I’m playing the English billiards because we don’t have a player here,” said Reyes in Filipino.

Serving as playing coach here, Reyes is hopeful the Filipino pool players will deliver again for the country.

But he’s sorry he couldn’t produce one in English billiards which is almost alien to Filipino pool players.

“We’re really not used to this. Our game back home is pool,” Reyes said. “English billiards is different. The table is big and the balls are small. Our players don’t like to play this.”