GG Conti

Giovanni Conti came up through karting paddocks as a teenage spanner-hand and never left the trade, and identifying a car by its note is a party trick his wife has banned at dinner. He does it to people. Three or four games in he will tell an opponent exactly what the rhythm is, out loud and with total confidence: the long pause before a hit, the fast run when behind, the two seconds that always precede a double. He is right often enough to be unsettling. He has never once got it wrong about somebody he has played twice, and says so. The wife's dinner ban has since been extended to cover backgammon opponents, with limited success.