GG Tesfaye

Dawit Tesfaye has worked the door of an Addis Ababa minibus for four decades, calling routes at full volume and estimating, conservatively he insists, that half the city has ridden with him. He tells anyone who will listen that he only plays the strongest members in the club, a claim that would be easier to believe if he had not spent three straight seasons finding reasons to be elsewhere whenever one of them sat down. He plays at blitz pace, throwing the cube with total conviction and letting fortune do whatever it likes with the result, quick, loud and fearless between routes. His cash game runs at the terminus on an oil-drum table, and the chouette there never has an empty seat for long.