$1,000,000 shot

$TAKE HOR$E said:

I know he had to run ten racks but I thought there might be some footage of the shot he made on the 9 in the end.

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dirtypool40 said:

I think I remembering reading how they set up a cam and got the last 5-6 racks on tape.

Somebody's got it.

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Rockin' Robin said:

Jay's description of the Million Dollar Challenge was pretty much right on. I arrived a day or two before the show started, and sweated "Big Dave" assembling the black Gold Crowns. The pockets were shimmed to 4 and 3/8 inches, and two balls would not even enter the opening points. We figured there was pretty much no chance of anyone running 10 racks, and I think the most I saw the first day was a two pack.

I was standing by the chart and sweating a match on the closest table when Earl started his run. After the first few racks, you could feel a certain tension in the room. On the fourth rack people started drifting over towards his table. By the fifth rack, the crowd was starting to interfere with other matches, and I started moving spectators out of the way. When the fifth rack was completed, I immediately went to CJ's office and informed him to GRAB THE CAMERA !!!!!!!!!!

By now, the entire pool room was gravitating towards the feature table, and after the sixth and seventh rack was completed, play had to be halted at the other tables because the crowd was out of control. The stands had no empty seats and people were standing 10 deep at every available viewing spot. Racks eight and nine saw everyone in the place at Earl's table. From being able to hear a pin drop to deafening cheers at the completion of every rack. Go Earl !!!!! Go Earl !!!!!!!! Go Earl !!!!!!!

As the long one-nine combo was lined up, everyone was holding their breathe. Earl slammed it home, and the entire place went NUTS !!!!!!!!!!

Earl leaped up in the air and speared his cue into the floor, (breaking the shaft,btw) and it was at least 30 minutes till we could resume play of the other matches, and Earl's match itself. To say the place went crazy would be an understatement. After calm was restored, Earl had grabbed another shaft and run an eleventh rack. I thought he was going to run out the set, but he missed a tough bank on the one-ball in the 12th game.

As Jay said, after the match, Earl sat down and signed pictures for everyone in the pool hall. I , too, failed to get a pic, but caught Earl later in Atlanta during the NSGA show.

Robin....

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WoodyJ said:

Just finished reading Jay's book. IIRC, Jay said in it that racks 6-10 must be video camed per the insurance company's contract (and it was). Also, by contract (since it was rack your own) that after rack 5 someone else had to do the racking. When Jay went to tell Earl that while he was racking #6 Earl blew Jay off and racked #6 anyway. Jay racked #7-10.

The insurance company welshed on the deal and after the lawsuit Earl eventually got $250,000.

EDIT: O.K. the long anwser copied straight out of Jay's book (and a plug for Jay's book -- any typos are mine).

sez Jay in his book:

EARL'S TEN RACKS

Another famous event in pool that I witnessed was when Earl ran the ten racks for a million dollars. Here's the way it all came down. CJ Wiley, Earl Strickland and several other players decided to break away from Don Mackey and the MPBA and start their own pro tour. CJ called this fledgling group the Professional Cuesports Association (PCA). To create interest in his new tour, CJ decided to offer a million dollar prize to anyone running ten consecutive racks of 9-ball, and he called this the The Million Dollar Challenge. This would be insured in a similar fashion to the Hole In One prizes in golf tournaments. So he contacted the appropriate insurance companies and inquired about buying insurance.

Meanwhile the first PCA event was scheduled in Dallas at CJ's Billiards, a very nice billiard room that he owned. I was hired to direct along with John McChesney and Robin Adair. The room had twenty four Gold Crown tables, and they all had fairly tight pockets. There was little chance of anyone running ten racks here, or so we thought.

The night before the tourney was to begin I ment CJ's insurance man in the office of the poolroom. They were ironing out the details of the Million Dollar offering. At this time CJ made the initial payment on the insurance policy, even though a formal document did not exist yet. According to accepted insurance law, the policy was in force the moment money was paid and accepted.

The next day the tournament began, and no one was running any racks, let alone ten! I think the high run of the day was three racks. That evening, Earl began his second match on a back table with Nick Mannino. We were playing Rack Your Own, and Earl had figured out the best way to rack on this table.

He was able to make the nine ball move toward the corner pocket on nearly every break. He won the flip and ran the first five racks, making two nine balls on the break. At this point they called me over to rack the balls. One of the stipulations of the insurance policy was that after a player runs five racks, a referee must rack the balls from then on for everthing to be legal. I hurried back to the table, and Earl was already racking the balls for game six. I said to him, "Hold it Earl, I have to rack." Nothing doing, Earl wouldn't let me touch the rack. He quickly finishes racking and breaks the balls, making a ball. The nine ball moves slowly toward the corner pocket and stops. He then runs out in his usual fast and loose style. CJ's wife Angela is now on the scene with her video camera, recording everything. That is another stipulation of the insurance policy. The final five racks must be recorded on tape.

Now CH and I are imploring Earl to let me rack, explaining to him that if he doesn't let me rack it will cancel the potential million dollar award. Earl finally relents an lets me rack the balls. I clean the table with my hands, trying to insure a good tight rack. I see that Earl has figured out a breaking pattern on this table, and I want to nullify that advantage. The nine barely moves this time, but Earl makes a ball and runs out anyway. Same thing in racks eight and nine. He needs to run one more rack for $1,000,000! Oh my God!

I'm a little nervous myself, and I make sure to put a really tight rack up there. Once again Earl delivers a powerful break and balls fly everywhere. One ball goes down and the nine ends up about a foot of so from the corner pocket. Not really that close. The cue ball has been kicked down near the end rail, and the one ball is up by the side pocket. All three balls are on the same side of the table. Earl has a few options here. He can try to shoot the one down in the corner past the nine, or he can try a long combination from the one to the nine. Either way it's a difficult shot, and he spends quite a bit of time examining the table.

Finally Earl decides to go for all the marbles, the long difficult combination. Even for a great player like Earl, he's an underdog to make this shot. Maybe one out of five times he will make it. Earl gets down and fires hard, perhaps hoping to luck something in if he misses the nine. The one flies towards the nine and makes a perfect hit. THE NINE GOES IN! EARL HAS WON A MILLION DOLLARS! Or has he? For good measure Earl runs the next rack, for eleven consecutive racks. It's a Race to Thirteen, so the match isn't quite over yet. Nick may have won a game or two after that, but it made little difference. Earl has run ten racks and the entire crowd has witnessed it.

After the match ends a petition is passed around for people to sign, saying they had witnessed the whole thing from beginning to end. By the time I signed off as the referee there must have been twenty five or thirty signatures on that sheet. A small table was then brought out, and a stack of Earls photo's was placed on it. Earl sat down at the table and signed a photo for every fan who wanted one. He didn't just sign his signature either. He wrote, "To 'So and So', the night I ran ten racks for $1,000,000, Earl Strickland." Pretty cool I thought. Why I didn't have him sign one for me I have no idea. There must have been over a hunderd people who lined up at that table, and it took Earl a good hour or two to give each of them a signed photo. I really admired earl for doing that.

Afterwards,, Earl and I headed back to the hotel in the same van. I told him how proud I was of him for his achievement, and also for taking the time to sign all those photos for his fans. Then I asked him the one burning question in my mind. "What were you thinking when you got down to shoot that long combination on the nine for all the money?" Earl paused a moment, looked at me and said, "I just wanted to give it a legitimate chance." I'll never forget that remark from an all time great player.

Now the plot thickened. The insurance companies (including Lloyds of London) who underwrote the policy were balking at making payment. It did look bad. CJ takes out the policy, and the first day of the tournament someone runs ten racks! Interestingly enough, no one has done anything like that since in a major pool tournament. Effern may have run nearly nine full racks in a comeback win at the World Pool Championships one year. That's the most I remember off the top of my head.

CJ went ahead and made the initial $50,000 payment to Earl out of his own pocket. That took a lot of class. He didn't want to look like a welsher, or make the PCA look phony. The insurance pay out of the million dollars was an Annuity, structured at $50,000 a year for twenty years. Still not bad, like a twenty year pension. Except that they didn't want to pay anything. They were trying to say no policy was in effect yet. That became the key question; Did CH make and an initial payment, and was it accepted by the agent?

It all became a matter for attorneys and the courts to settle. The whole mess took two years to sort out, but finally the insurance companies made a settlement. Earl got a lump sum, something like $250,000. And CJ got his $50,000 back. Earl was happy and so was CJ. To this day, CJ has never done anything with the video of the last five games that Angela recorded. I think it would be a best seller.

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