Block-It-Pocket by Michael Ernst

It seems like whenever I meet new people, the conversation inevitably gets to Block-It-Pocket and then the question pops-up, “However did you come to invent a board game?” Well, here’s my story...

I had various jobs growing up including waiting on tables and gardening and driving an 18-wheeler at one point - but when my dad retired, I went into business with him and we built a 10-table pool hall in Orlando, Florida from scratch. Now, I always loved to play billiards with my friends and thought this would be the start of a great, fun-filled business career. Little did I know.

Because the pool hall was a new business and because people   didn’t know that we were open, it became my job to play billiards on the table closest to the front of the pool hall in order to encourage people to come in. Seven days a week for 14 hours a day, I played pool. Straight pool, Eight Ball, Nine-Ball. You name it. I played it ... on that front table. After a couple of months, I got pretty good at shooting pool but I also got pretty bored as you might guess. So, I started making up games and imagining ways to make pool more interesting in order to pass away the time. These new pool games became the seed of Block-It Pocket.  As our pool hall business developed, I was able to spend fewer hours playing pool and more time on imagination, invention and development of the games that    I dreamed up to pass the time.

Along the way, I met a lot of nice people and a lot of real colorful characters (you can only imagine), who kept things interesting.  Like Marty, the professional wrestler, who did flips over the pool cues and like Professor Michele who always encouraged me. Combining some of the better suggestions with all the thoughts of my own, I developed a series of ideas (inventions) which I took to a inventor’s seminar in  Miami in 1997 where I met Dr. Jay Morton, a 75-year-old consultant (he was one of the original “Rascals”-Stinky), who was a Guest Speaker at the seminar. He took time from his busy schedule during the seminar and helped me focus on a plan that made sense. “Of all these ideas which are very good, Michael, promise me that you’ll do the board game first.”

Block-It-Pocket is what I promised him.