The 70's had a few good tournaments like Joe Burns fiesta in Dayton every year. There were actually a lot of tournaments popping up all over the Eastern USA. Mostly in poolrooms and bars with five thousand added or a ten thousand guaranteed purse. The top players would travel from Dayton to Akron to Greenville to Macon over to Nashville and maybe down to Mobile. A player like Buddy Hall could find a good tournament to play in every weekend in a bar or poolroom. He probably knew the highways of the Eastern USA better than any living human.
There was no organized tour so to speak but lots of tourneys to compete in, if you were so inclined. The room owners liked them because they packed the place for a few days and brought lots of action with it. In those days every pool tournament was a place to gamble. There were a few independent larger tournaments promoted by some unscrupulous promoters where players did not get paid. A few times they (or their backers) resorted to drastic measures (guns etc.) to get their money.
I never heard of anyone getting killed (other than Monroe Brock), but once in a while the law got called in. Believe it or not, almost all the bar and poolroom tourneys all paid off! Buddy probably won more tournaments and more money back then than anybody else by a wide margin. He was winning bar table and big table events every weekend for years. And these were not soft fields either. Buddy was to put it in a word, AMAZING! It was like he was first or second in every tournament he played in.
