Lede improvement

This is the bad lede I chose last week:

“The concentration and exact direction that the player wants to give the ball are some of billiards’ characteristics, a game that brings friends together, who perform over the table shots to demonstrate who is the best.”

This is the lede I wrote to try to make it better:

Billiards is not only about technical skill, it is about intelligence. When Efren “The Magician” Reyes, the two-time Filipino world champion, plays, he frowns his eyebrows and reflects concentration. He imagines the balls’ course, designs an strategy, just as a writer imagines their characters’ fortune. In billiards, there is precision and science; ability and passion that surround Abraham Lincoln's favorite game.

What I did to improve the lede:

- I tried to make this lede more interesting, using a literary tone, rather than an informative one.

- I included an important fact (Efren Reyes part) as an excuse to make my point: that this game is not only about skill, but intelligence.

- I didn't talk about any specific rule or shot: That would come later in the story because it may sound boring to mention it at the beginning for people that don't know much about the game (except if the news is about a shot). The objective in this lede is that readers continue with the story, not give a lot of facts about billiards’ structure.

- I included an interesting – not necessary- fact (the Abraham Lincoln's part) to give the paragraph more color.