GG Etoo

Samuel Etoo spent his working life on a crate at the front of a wholesale hall, selling fish and yams to a room that bid with its hands rather than its voice, and the habit of watching wrists never left him. Before each roll he squares his checkers: nudges every one flat and central, the whole board, a single pass, then throws. It takes a moment, he has done it since his first season on the crate, and if somebody interrupts him he starts again from the beginning. Asked about it he laughs and says a caller settles his own table first. He is generous, slow, formidably hard to get past, and entirely serious about that last bit.