An inside look at the underworld of high-stakes pool

By L. Jon Wertheim

Adapted from Running the Table by L. Jon Wertheim. Copyright © 2007 by L. Jon Wertheim. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin

Running the Table recounts the story of Danny (Kid Delicious) Basavich, who, after dropping out of his New Jersey high school in the 1990s, went from being a suicidal, morbidly overweight teen to a legendary pool hustler. This adaptation highlights the Derby City Classic, an annual tournament that doubles as a two-week gamble-thon.

"Do you copy? We got a footrace in the lobby. I need back-up. We got a bunch of people for this footrace in the lobby. Do you copy?....Yep, I said a foot-race, that's a 10-4."
-- Hotel security guard, 3:30 a.m., January 9, 2006.

At some ungodly hour early in the morning of Jan. 10, Efren "The Magician" Reyes walked purposefully through the lobby of Louisville's Executive West hotel, entered the converted ballroom, found a pool table, unsheathed his cue and began practicing for his next match in the Derby City Classic. Reyes, a squared-jawed Filipino, is the most skilled pool practitioner on the planet, and as he broke the balls, he drew a small crowd. It was nothing, though, compared to the knot of spectators that ringed a table in the "Action Room" on the other end of the hotel.

There, Cliff Joyner, a portly Atlantan with caramel-colored skin and a gunslinger's comportment, was doing battle with Cincinnati's Eric Durbin, an intense-looking pool sorcerer who claimed that he was a few weeks removed from a 10-month drug-related sentence in an Ohio jail. The game was one-pocket -- as much a mental as a physical exercise, it requires players to sink eight balls into a single designated pocket -- and the stakes were immense. Both Joyner and Durbin had arrived in Louisville with stakehorses (financial backers) in tow. When Joyner offered Durbin a two-ball handicap as well as the right to break in a "four-ahead set" (the first player to seize a four-game lead would win) the stakehorses put up $5,000 apiece. Once word of the handicap passed through the crowd at the hotel, the set generated multiples more in side action.

Joyner and Durbin had started their duel at six the previous evening and, as momentum swayed pendulously, the folks who had wagered a small fortune grew more enthralled. Never mind Reyes. This was action. As night turned into day, the two players kept at it, taking only brief breaks to drag on cigarettes, mainline Red Bull, or hit the rest room. Finally, around 6 a.m., over the symphony of clinking beer bottles and clunking balls on adjacent tables, Joyner came up with a brilliant flourish of shotmaking and, to the delight of half the room, closed out the set. "That's my mother------!" screamed one of Joyner's stakehorses, now several thousand dollar wealthier, patting the player on his Atlanta Braves cap.

For a guy who'd just finished playing for 12 straight hours and had just lost a lot of people a lot of money, Durbin was hardly the picture of despondent. "I'll win it back, no problem," he said smiling widely, exposing a set of white teeth that looked two rows of small iPods. "It's only Monday. Or Tuesday. Or whatever. Hey, what day is it, anyway?"

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