GG Yusof

Faizal Yusof taught mathematics in Penang for forty years and still sits down to a chess board every week without fail, at the same club, against mostly the same faces. Asked which game he prefers, backgammon or chess, he changes the subject with the ease of a man who has done it many times, and nobody at either table has managed to pin him down. He reads a backgammon position with a chess teacher's patience, calculating several moves ahead and turning the cube with cold accuracy, treating each game as a problem with a single correct answer. Patient with his old students, sharp at both boards, he reviews his losses the way he once marked homework, and lets the calculated play speak for him.