Reisman started playing table tennis at the age of 12 in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and then as a hustler in New York in the 1940s, playing for bets and prizes, notably at Lawrence's Broadway Table Tennis Club at 54th Street and Broadway. Comedian Jonathan Katz recalled that he met and played against Reisman when he was a youth and that Reisman was an amazing athlete, and that he was once beaten by him with the flat end of a chess piece.