GG Sadeghi

Ali Sadeghi inherited a teahouse from his father at twenty and left the ground floor exactly as he found it. Upstairs is a different business: fifteen tables, a hierarchy of regulars four decades deep, and Ali at the head of the room, chain-smoking and refusing to lose in front of people he has known since childhood. He has held the title three times. He took up the standard game at thirty-five and brought all of that with him, including the habit of sending the cube straight back rather than sitting on it and letting you wonder. He does not stop speaking, and every word of it is friendly.