Matvey Natanzon (better known by his pseudonym Falafel) (July 5, 1968 - February 14, 2020) was a Russian-born Israeli

backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...

player.

Life and career

Natanzon was born in

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

and moved with his mother to

Azor Azor ( he, אָזוֹר, ar, أزور) (also ''Azur'') is a small town ( local council) in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, on the old Jaffa-Jerusalem road southeast of Tel Aviv. Established in 1948 on the site of the depopulated Palestinian vi ...

, a small

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i town near

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

, in 1972. He moved to

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

as a teenager. Natanzon graduated from the New York State

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

in 1991 with a degree in accounting. Shortly thereafter he moved to

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Homeless, he lived for 6 months in

Washington Square Park Washington Square Park is a public park in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. One of the best known of New York City's public parks, it is an icon as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity. ...

and learned to hustle

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

and backgammon from local gamblers. Some of Natanzon's associates at that time went on to become famous poker players, including

Phil Laak Philip Courtney Laak (born September 8, 1972) is an Irish–American professional poker player and a poker commentator, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Laak holds a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, a ...

Gus Hansen Gustav Hansen (born 13 February 1974) is a Danish professional poker player from Copenhagen, Denmark who has lived in Monaco since 2003. In his poker career, Hansen has won three World Poker Tour open titles, one WSOP bracelet and the 2007 Auss ...

, and

Abe Mosseri Abraham Mosseri (born June 21, 1974, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American professional backgammon and poker player from New York City, New York, who won the 2009 World Series of Poker $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball event. Primarily known as ...

. Natanzon himself played poker and was part owner of a card parlor in Tel Aviv. In 2005 Natanzon played on the Israeli team in the Nations Cup backgammon tournament. In 2007, Natanzon was named the number one backgammon player in the world by an unscientifically compiled peer-audited review known as Giants of Backgammon. Although the rankings are not precise, Jake Jacobs, the list's compiler, says about it that "We can never know for certain who is the best player in a given year, but we can confidently eliminate 99.99 per cent. Falafel survived the cut." Natanzon died on February 14, 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Natanzon, Matvey American backgammon players Soviet emigrants to Israel Israeli emigrants to the United States Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent American people of Russian-Jewish descent Jewish American sportspeople Place of death missing Sportspeople from Buffalo, New York University at Buffalo alumni 1968 births 2020 deaths 21st-century American Jews