GG Novik

Maksim Novik has played wing for the same Minsk club since junior level and tends bar through the off-season with a board on the counter. He plays in shifts. Forty-five seconds is meaningless here, so he has settled on twenty minutes: up out of the chair, five away from it, back down again, and he will pause at the changeover whatever the position is doing. Opponents find it maddening and he finds their objections incomprehensible, since nobody has ever managed a full period without a break. He runs a chip game in the bar on quiet Tuesdays and referees it himself, which the regulars call generous and slightly rigged. Two of them now schedule around him.