$10,000 over a period of several days. Challenge Matches In the nineteenth century and up through the mid-1960s, a common way for world billiards titles to change hands was by a challenge match, meaning a challenge was issued to a championship titleholder accompanied by stake money held by a third party. One of Lassiter's successful defences of his title at the World Straight Pool Championship was in 1966 against Cisero Murphy which was one of the last title challenge matches in billiards. At that match Lassiter showed his talent at —that is, performing some act with the intent of distracting the opponent. Reportedly, Murphy was on a great and long of balls. In response, Lassiter pretended to fall asleep. When Murphy noticed Lassiter sleeping he promptly missed. Lassiter, who was wide awake, jumped out of his chair and ran out the match for the win. Later years After his official retirement from pool in 1975, Lassiter continued to play in some low-profile tournaments, but due to years of hard living while on the road and marathon gambling sessions that would last into the early hours of the morning, he often was not able to play quite as well as he had in his younger days. Even so, many pool players during those years claim he was still one of the greatest players alive, and a force to be reckoned with on the pool table. Lassiter did come out of retirement, along with many other pool greats, to compete twice in "The Legendary Stars of Pocket Billiards Tournament," once in January 1982 at Harrah's Marina Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, and again in 1983, at the Claridge Hotel and Casino, also in Atlantic City. The players who competed in the 1982 tournament were Lassiter, Joe Balsis, Babe Cranfield, Jimmy Moore, U.J. Puckett, Irving Crane, Minnesota Fats, and Willie Mosconi. In 1983, the line-up was the same minus Balsis and Cranfield, and with Jimmy Caras added. These were round-robin tournaments, in which each player would be matched against the others in a single match, with each playing the same number of matches, and receiving a set number of points for each match won. Each match consisted of one seven-ball set, race to four games, one nine-ball set, race to four games, and in the event of a tie, one eight-ball set, best two out of three games. At the 1983 tournament,