GG Hasanov

Elvin Hasanov opened the place with almost nothing and put the nard boards in during the first week. Some regulars have held the same seats for three decades. One disagreement, from 1997, about whether a man lifted his hand before the roll had settled, has never been formally resolved, and he is its appointed judge: both parties still bring him evidence, and he still declines to decide, on the grounds that the day he does the argument ends. His sons keep proposing renovations. He refuses them all. There is one rule of his own in that room: the board passes to whoever is waiting the moment a player hesitates over a move, and it applies to him first, which is why his hands are already going before the dice have stopped. He enters nothing but the DMP leagues, because a match that ends in one game leaves the board free for the next man. The room has run in Russian since the year he opened it and he has never seen a reason to change that.