Masayuki Mochizuki

If you make a good choice, you have a better chance to get a better outcome, right?

One, two, three, four.

Two, one.

It was a good game.

It was really good.

I thought you're going to win this one.

Well, my $500 did last more than three minutes, maybe an hour.

We played three short matches and Mochi won all of them.

But I held my own against a world champion.

And I certainly couldn't do that on the basketball court or a football field.

That is just one of the many interesting things about this game.

Another is what Mochi said about how backgammon is a lot like life itself.

And I would hear some version of that from just about everyone I spoke with as we were making this episode.

At the Jersey City tournament, I had met a very good player named Melissa Shin, who works as an architect in Los Angeles.

And she told me to get in touch with her next time I was in town.

And she would put together an event with her backgammon club.

Yes, there are backgammon clubs more and more all the time.

And I happened to be in L.A.

soon after, so we met up at a beer garden in Venice Beach.

Melissa had set up a game for me.