GG Maes

Pieter Maes cuts diamonds in Antwerp, third generation at the same bench, reading a rough stone's angles and flaws by eye before committing to cuts that cannot be reconsidered. He walks to work through the quarter, nods to half of it, and trusts his eye over any scanner the trade has yet sold him. He plays the way he cuts. The move goes down once, he does not revisit it in his head afterwards, and he has said that a game with no way to undo anything is the only kind worth taking seriously. Observant and dry, he gives each move a cutter's care and none of them a second one.