If you have played backgammon in a serious casino, there is a fair chance you have played on a Goldstein.
From the trading floor to the casino
Daniel Goldstein learned the game in the Manhattan clubs of the seventies and spent four decades on a trading floor by day and at a board by night. Goldstein Gaming Supply Ltd. grew out of that world: a small, exacting supplier of the classic green boards that now sit in most of the major casinos. It is the sort of business that suits him. Traditional product, serious customers, very little need to explain what it is for.
Built for the high stake
A Goldstein board is built for the long session and the high stake. The case is real crocodile leather. The playing field is fine merino wool in the deep casino green that gave the line its name, chosen for the way the dice settle and the checkers slide. The hinges are finished in gold leaf, and the checkers are polished gemstone with gold-leaf rims. Every element is there for a reason, and the reason is always the same: the players at that table expect the best, and they notice when they do not get it.
Classic Green
The Classic Green line keeps the field and changes the points, from the traditional Red White to Blue Yellow, White Black and Yellow Light Brown. The result is a board that looks right in any card room in the world and is recognised by most of the people sitting in one.
Purveyor to the casinos
Goldstein is, in effect, purveyor to the casinos, and that is where nearly all of his boards go. Private buyers are another matter. Top players want them, collectors ask after them, and a small showroom in Manhattan receives more enquiries than it can answer. Goldstein simply does not have the hands. He will not take on more work at the expense of his own game, and at seventy-four that game is still sharp enough that he regards protecting it as a business decision. The waiting list is the price of that decision, and he considers it a fair one.
At the board
He still plays every day, unhurried, calling everybody under thirty kid, and waiting for a cube to arrive at the wrong price. When it does, he takes it with the same quiet pleasure he once took on the floor. More than a few of the professionals he plays with own a Goldstein. He did not have to sell them one.
