Here are our thoughts on Rubilen Amit’s incredible third world pool title in New Zealand.
Cebuana pool player Rubilen “Bingkay” Amit has done it again, claiming the 2024 WPA World Women’s 9 ball Championship, defeating Siming Chen in the final, a best-of-five sets of races to four, on Sunday in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Here are my musings on this fantastic achievement.
This is Amit’s third solo world championship, and it’s meaningful that it’s the first outside of the Philippines.
The 42-year-old took down her first world title in SM North Edsa way back in 2009, topping Shin Mei Liu in the final of the Women’s World 10 ball championship. Four years later she would repeat the feat, this time in Resorts World, defeating Kelly Fisher in the title match.
Amit had reached another world title final previously in 2007, falling to Pan Xiaoting in the Women’s World 9 Ball final in Taiwan.
There would be no home-court advantage this time for Amit, and for me, it is significant because I recall a conversation I had during the 2013 Women’s World 10 ball with Allison Fisher, the Hall of Famer from England. We were talking about the raft of players from China who were tearing up women’s pool. But the Chinese were not playing well in that particular tournament so I asked her if she had any idea why. She gave me the most unbelievably geeky and technical answer ever: it was the humidity.
Apparently, when pool is played in a tropical country like the Philippines, the humidity is much higher, and that can affect the way the game plays out. A wetter table doesn’t play like a dry table in a temperate climate, with balls rolling on the cloth and bouncing off the rails at slightly different angles. This has been corroborated to me by a Finnish pro who lived in the Philippines many years ago, Sampo Eronen. The Chinese players were obviously having difficulty adjusting.
I always thought about this conversation with Fisher in regard to Amit’s two World 10 Ball titles. Maybe there was an ever-so-slightly small asterisk hanging over both trophies. That somehow, Amit had benefited from this tiny but very real home-field advantage to reach the summit of Women’s pool.
After Sunday, all of those doubts vanished. Amit had taken down Siming Chen, herself a previous world champ from China, convincingly in a final after spotting her in the first set. (This event employed a tennis-like format with the final a best of five sets, with each set a race-to-four.) The Filipina did it in a temperate country, New Zealand, after mowing down a series of tough opponents to reach the final, including her good friend and countrywoman, Chezka Centeno, who won the Women’s World 10 ball last year.
Rubilen Amit has proven she can beat the best in the world, in any pool game, in any continent, and no matter what the atmospheric conditions are. She has now won three individual WPA World titles, one more than Efren Reyes, Ronnie Alcano, and Carlo Biado. Reyes and Alcano both won one each in 9 ball and 8 ball, while Biado has 9 and 10 ball world titles. In theory, Amit is the greatest Filipino tournament player based on that criteria.
Amit has also won a World Mixed Doubles Classic with Efren Reyes in 2011, and another WPA Mixed Teams 10 ball championship alongside Johann Chua and Carlo Biado two years ago. It can be argued that she sort of has five world titles to her name.
Rubilen Amit is not your ordinary pool champion from the Philippines.
The image of the Filipino pool player might not be the best in the eyes of many. One imagines street-wise hustlers in flip-flops, emerging from smoky pool halls with one thing in mind: relieving you of your money. Uneducated, uncouth, and lacking in character. It’s a lingering perception, not entirely true in my opinion, that has hindered the sport’s appeal.
But Amit shatters that stereotype. The lady from Mandaue, Cebu has a degree in Accounting from UST. To my knowledge, this makes her the only world champion who graduated from a UAAP school. (If I have missed anyone, I will be happy to be proven wrong. Reach out to me on X at @PassionateFanPH.)
Bingkay, as her friends call her, is cheerful, polite, articulate in Filipino, English, and I assume Cebuano as well, and has other concerns outside the pool world. Amit has invested in a takoyaki stand in the Ayala Mall in Manila Bay, and appears to be supporting E-sports Cafe in Paranaque as well. She also sits on the board of Project: Steady Asia, the mental health program of Rock Ed Philippines, the organization of her good friend Gang Badoy Capati. This project gives a helping hand to national athletes in their mental health journey.
Amit has also organized the Amit Cup, a series of pool tournaments for women, to help grow the game for her fellow lady players.
Amit was also a The Outstanding Woman in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS) awardee in 2022. Nominated by Capati, herself a TOWNS awardee, Amit was selected in the same year as celebrated Rappler journalist Pia Ranada.
I hope Amit will have a position in the administration of cue sports in the Philippines one day.
Bingkay has also been in a longtime relationship with her partner Jazzie Salvador, making her one of the most successful openly LGBT Filipina athletes.
Amit worked hard to turn around her game for this title.
July 2023 was the last time I commentated on Bingkay in a tournament. It was the Sharks International 9 Ball Open in Quezon City. Amit played against a male player, I cannot recall the name, and lost badly.
After the match I recall her dejected mood after her poor performance, sticking her tongue out and shaking her head with an expression of pure exasperation. You would never think that a little over a year later she would be winning her third world championship.
Capati noticed a change in Amit over the last few months. She improved her diet and started doing yoga and going to the gym more often. Capati also says that Amit even started staying up later than usual to get her body used to New Zealand time, which is four hours ahead of the Philippines.
“When she flew out for this tournament, we knew she was dead set on taking this cup home,” recalls Capati.
Amit powered through her mini-slump and straight back into the pantheon of Filipino pool greatness. Like the Women’s national football team in the 2023 World Cup, she too burst into the history books in New Zealand.
And this is one Pinay pool warrior who is far from done. There surely are even more chapters coming up in the Rubilen Amit story.
Banner image from Pro Billiards Series on Facebook.