Masayuki Mochizuki

He was a world-class backgammon player and a backgammon writer, chronicling the scene, and it was quite a scene to chronicle.

And some people, we should say, wrote not one but two books just about the Bear Off situation, yes?

That would be you?

And the pigeons or marks or suckers or whales or whatever you want to call them, were they the same cast of characters or did you have to refresh the pigeons?

You're supporting yourself.

This is your profession.

Yeah.

Can you give some insight into your earnings?

I'm guessing you don't have a nice statistically sound career earnings calculation.

Not at all.

How did you develop and keep your opponents playing you for money when you were plainly better?

So you could come out of there with several hundred dollars a night easily, maybe a couple thousand, right?

Sure, sure.

And overall, just to give a sense of the luck versus the skill, overall in a given year, do you think you were ever down for a given year?

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

Oh, no, he says confidently.

So a mark, who would be the ideal mark?

Like, would I be really good?

Because I'm like decent, but maybe good enough to think that I'm better than I am.