The Fan, Bryanston

Monday, January 24, 2005

Service: * * *1/2
Food: * * *
Ambience: * * * *
Babe Count: * * *

Andreas is sitting across the board from me. I'm playing the role of kindly uncle helping him with his game. He's just turned 25 or 26, and I'm 36 and 11/12s, seeing as my birthday is coming up on 17 Feb. So I'm not really qualified to be his uncle figure. But I reckon this is backgammon, and I'll do whatever it takes to win.

So whenever he makes a completely arseholed play, I feel it's my duty to stop him before he picks up his dice, and ask him to explain the play to me. As a consequence, he avoids making some seriously stupid, irrational moves, and starts beating me gently.

I'm okay with that, cos he's actually got the potential to be a strong player, but he's blind to his weaknesses, and he sank down to C-division last year, and didn't get high quality feedback. Not that my feedback is all that high quality. Heck. I was middle of B-div last year. Hardly one of the greats. But shit, at least my advice makes sense.

He gets a respectable lead over me, and then I start pulling out the stops. And I offer him psychologically harrowing cubes. And he sometimes drops them incorrectly, and he sometimes takes them incorrectly. Both cases give me more points. Yeah, baby.

In the end, after sipping a good minestrone soup accompanied by loads of brown bread, brought by Eric, who seems to have improved over last week, I slash Andreas's jugular, and sacrifice him to the gods of dice by beating him 21--17. Very satisfying. My second match of the year, and I'm now ready to start winning.