GG Kowalski

Tomasz Kowalski qualified as an actuary in Warsaw in 1969 and spent his career pricing risk for the state insurer through everything the decades put in front of it. He found backgammon in mathematics journals in the seventies and worked it out from first principles, because there was nothing to read and nobody to ask. He has been the country's cube reference for as long as anybody can remember.

In retirement, he put some of his money behind a small luxury leather board maker and eventually took it over. It now bears his name: Kowalski Boards. It has since grown into a renowned brand producing high-end luxury backgammon boards. He describes the decision in the same terms he uses for almost everything else: the product was good, the price was sensible and the downside was limited. It has performed accordingly.

He is eighty-one and he plays quickly, because he settled these questions forty years ago and has not needed to reopen them. He doubles at almost exactly the same place every time, in a band so narrow that opponents have tried to use it against him and found there is nothing to use. He has outlasted three generations of more interesting players by being right.