GG Chowdhury

Rafiq Chowdhury owns a fleet of rickshaws, a business of a hundred small arguments a day, and he settles a board the way he settles those: fast, loud and entirely certain. He gives his opponents everything. A rematch, a shorter format, advice nobody requested, the assurance that a bad roll was only a bad roll. At the cash tables he hands the box to whoever is furthest down, unasked, as though the chips were the smaller half of the favour. He believes himself the most generous man at any table, and until the seventh point he is. Then the helpfulness dries up, the doubles arrive every other turn, and whoever is sitting opposite learns something about him that he has never once noticed. Told about it afterwards, he apologises with real feeling and does it again a fortnight later.