Archer Defeats Strickland

Archer victorious in close match (15 to 12) 

Chicago, IL - The International Pool Tour (IPT) held its first Challenge match between Earl "The Pearl" Strickland and Johnny "The Scorpion" Archer in the heart of downtown Chicago.  Both players are well respected around the world as two of the greatest players to ever play the game. After more than 3 hours of grueling, hard fought and tense hours Johnny Archer emerged victoriously with a score of 15 to 12.  Strickland, who was down by five games at one point, showed a valiant effort by pulling within 2 games of Archer before eventually losing the match.  Archer walked away with $5,000 USD, courtesy of Kevin Trudeau (Founder, IPT), and a beautiful cruise for two provided by Incentives International, a company owned by IPT Pro Linda Carter.

The demand to watch this event was so high in the hour before the match that the IPT web servers became overloaded causing the web site to freeze up for several minutes. IPT technical staff were quick to respond with the contingency plan put in place to compensate for more-than-expected web traffic. Because the servers were being hit so hard, it took a while for the appropriate re-directs to initiate on the web site. Basic Members who signed up before the match were rushed a new link by email, and the re-directs were successfully operating just before the beginning of the live broadcast. IPT technical staff reported that roughly 85%-90% of the Basic Members who signed up to view the match were logged on and viewing the live stream in time for the beginning of the match. Within several minutes thereafter, the remainder of viewers were successfully viewing the stream. It will take a couple days to compile all of the web stats. However, the IPT servers are built for heavy traffic, so the number of visits it would take to slow or crash the servers is astronomical.

Visit the IPT Challenge Match 1 image gallery

We are happy to announce that the match is already up in the Videos section of the IPT Web Site. The match will be streaming for free through the end of December, 2007. You can watch the video right now! The video is unedited right now and the begining of the video has some footage that was streaming before the broadcast officially began. In a few days, it will be edited down to the beginning of the official broadcast. This is your chance to catch some classic Mike Sigel moments before they disappear from the video file forever!

The match was played on a Diamond IPT Pro Table, the official table of the IPT. Also, the Master Rack was used as the official rack of the challenge match. Sponsors also include Billiardcue.com, HustlinUSA, L.E.A.N.I. Slate, Laser Stroke, and Incentives International.