to get the dates and settled down to play against an extremely enthousiastic old man .Now the board was hand made , but was ok , and the black men were blue plastic bottle caps , and the white men were transparent polyproylene caps. That did not bother me , the thing that caught me out was the Algerian cook!! The board was the "wrong " way around ( double corner on left!!!!!) Wow I thought ...well lets go I can just play by numbers if I have "trouble" with the "" transposition""
The single men are played like in our game with no backward jumps , but the king has the russian longjump rules .
In the end, all of these changes plus the lack of time too were just too much for me and I lost rather timidly.
Looking at my chauffeur I asked if we had time for 1 more , but I was hurried off the scene as there was still a long bumpy drive ahead.
During our trip to the airport I told the driver that I was sick of losing that game, but his only reply was while laughing "" you lost to an old man"" .
He reassured me that they are always there every day of the year from 08h00 till 18h00 playing their Algerian cooked game and he promised to stop off on the way down next time , which should be some time in February , so that I could have another "go".
This is the story of the Algerian cook signed by a sad checker loser ,but who in the end was overjoyed once again to have experienced the warm hospitality of the Algerian people
William Docherty
