{"id":221,"date":"2005-03-07T01:56:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-07T07:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=221"},"modified":"2005-03-07T01:56:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-07T07:56:00","slug":"the-fan-bryanston-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/the-fan-bryanston-7\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fan, Bryanston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 7, 2005<\/h2>\n

Service: * *
Food: N\/A
Ambience: * * *
Babe Count: * * * 1\/2<\/i> <\/p>\n

I’ve made an arrangement with Tony Moutzouris, the best backgammon player in our club, to arrive late. This is because Damon Berry has invited me to an industry-only screening of the promo for a film he was involved in workshopping. <\/p>\n

The British director came to South Africa to do an extensive workshop with local actors. It’s a local story, and, judging from the promo, it’s going to be a tear-jerker deluxe. An important film. I’m really glad I was there.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>Now I’m facing Tony across a crowded backgammon board. He offers me the cube, and I mull over it for a while. Tony Patz wanders over. “Have you decided yet?” he asks. I say no. And he pulls out a little card with a miniature backgammon board printed on it. “Write down the position, and I’ll analyse it later in Snowy,” he says.<\/p>\n

This is something all good backgammon players do. Whenever they come across a position that they’re not certain about, they make a note and mull over it later using software, and chatting to experts online. I haven’t been doing this. Mainly cos I’m not the very best player. But I’m good enough to want to get to the next level. So I write the position down and hand Tony Patz his card.<\/p>\n

I turn down the cube.<\/p>\n

Tony Patz says, “That was an EASY take. But I’ll analyse it tonight.”<\/p>\n

Tony Moutzouris agrees. “It’s important to know how you’ll react to the cube,” he says.<\/p>\n

In the end, I lose 21–13, which isn’t bloody bad. I somehow got 13 points off a dude who can’t make an incorrect move. Wow!<\/p>\n

And I decide to design a card to print on my lazer printer. From now on, I’m going to start improving my game.<\/p>\n

Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 7, 2005 Service: * * Food: N\/A Ambience: * * * Babe Count: * * * 1\/2 I’ve made an arrangement with Tony Moutzouris, the best backgammon player in our club, to arrive late. This is because Damon …<\/p>\n

The Fan, Bryanston<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-3z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}