About Us
In February of 1972 a group of aircrew including Captain Christensen, who was a subordinate of El Presidente Niels Lumholdt of Thai Airways was diverted to Mactan Airport in Cebu because of a typhoon in Manila. They got boarded up in Eddie’s Log Cabin and fast found their way to a group of beer in the coffee shop. Here they saw the other guests playing Balut and quickly picked it up. Niels Lumholdt, who was also a frequent visitor to Cebu, got interested and introduced the game to a number of IBF’s founding fathers in Bangkok, where the first tournament was held at Copenhagen Bar, managed by Noi og Per Kastrup on March 9th, 1972. Several years later, the jackpot column was added to the scorecard as this feature was not part of the original poker dice game. For IBF’s complete history, please read Jan Pilebo’s excellent article on www. balut.com.
Later on a couple of Europeans staying at the hotel refined the rules to allow more than two persons to play at one time. Balut – Cebu. Around 1954- 55 the coffee shop had become a very popular morning and late night restaurant. Eddie wanted the employees of the various offices at the port to stop by for a drink after work. He recalled the Balut game, and invited some of his regular breakfast customers to come back after work for a game. Not surprisingly it fast became a success, and people started coming to the coffee shop throughout the day. A new game had been invented but it did not have a name. One day Eddie and the players left the hotel and went for a walk, they heard the ubiquitous egg vendors calling out their product: “Balut!” Eddie and the others decided that this was the right name for the game.
Balut – Cebu. Around 1954- 55 the coffee shop had become a very popular morning and late night restaurant. Eddie wanted the employees of the various offices at the port to stop by for a drink after work. He recalled the Balut game, and invited some of his regular breakfast customers to come back after work for a game. Not surprisingly it fast became a success, and people started coming to the coffee shop throughout the day.
Balut is the fertilized embryo of a duck that is boiled alive and eaten in the egg shell. Because it has a broth that should be sipped before peeling the shell, baluts tastes its best when eaten hot. It is known to be a high-protein, hearty snack. If you want to have a balut snack without visiting the streets, just keep your ears alert. Many balut vendors roam around villages and shout, “BALUT!”, in the evening with a deep, loud voice. You truly see that you have arrived at the HOME of balut when you come to the Philippines. There are many opinions about what Balut is, and if it is good or bad, but it is definitely a significant part of Philippine culture.
The history of Balut starts with Edward ‘Eddie’ Woolbright, who would become one of the most famous Americans in the Philippines during the second half of the 20th century.
Poker Dice.
Right after the end of the Second World War, a group of American GIs met every evening at Eddie Woolbright’s Tacloban airport hotel coffee shop to talk about the war. Afterwards they would proceed to some rounds of the American national sport of poker. One of the soldiers was more adept at it than the rest of the group, and they fast got tired of him taking their money every night.
One night they decided to pull his legs, so they hid all the playing cards of the hotel. Sometime during the night, he asked for the playing cards as usual. As they could not be found, he grabbed five dice lying on a table and used them instead of the cards, and the game of Poker Dice was created.