GG Kovalenko

Olena Kovalenko is a paediatric nurse and a single mother of two, and she plays in the quiet hours after her children are in bed, a pot of linden tea at her side. She came to backgammon from chess and still approaches the board like a chess player, calm and patient and thinking several moves ahead. Resilient and unfailingly polite, she rarely says much during a game but always offers a kind word at the end. The board is her small, steady refuge at the close of a long day. The sound is off, always, because a notification at that hour carries through the flat. She has never heard the dice land or the checkers go down, and learned from another member that either makes a noise at all, which she found funny for a week.