Before Subhas Kim Kandasamy left Singapore for boarding school in London, his mother gave him the following advice: “You’re going to be drinking, and you’re going to be gambling. Just make sure that if you do those things, at least be chic about it.”
Little did she know just how much her son would take it to heart. On a Monday evening in late July, Kandasamy presided over two different mahjong tables at Maxime’s, the Robin Birley founded private members’ club on the Upper East Side, gently instructing a well-dressed cohort about dragon tiles as white-jacketed waiters liberally poured wine and handed out cocktails.
Kandasamy is a hot commodity in New York: in September 2024, the Singaporean founded Mahjong Palace, a social gaming club that gives mahjong and Cantonese poker lessons. Ten months later, he amassed quite the clientele for game nights: Maxime’s for one, as well as art galleries like Charles Moffett. Mahjong Palace has also popped up this summer at trendy Tribeca restaurant Macao Trading Co.
Once associated with gentlemen’s clubs or old lady afternoons, game nights have recently caught on with a younger, cooler subset within New York City. Fair Warning Auction House threw an invite-only backgammon tournament at members-only haunt Coco’s this past May where art world VIPs rolled dice while drinking Ruinart. Chinatown’s Wing on Wo & Co.—the neighborhood’s oldest operating store—held a mahjong tournament to kick off its centennial celebration in July. And over in the West Village, San Vicente offers both backgammon and Uno evenings for its celebrity members.
Photo: Cobey Arner / Courtesy of TWP
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Photo: Cobey Arner / Courtesy of TWP
Fashion designer Suzie Kondi agrees that it is the summer of games: “I’ve asked my 84-year-old mother-in-law to teach me how to play mahjong. I might even get to join her weekly game if I’m lucky enough,” she says. (Although her game of choice is “backgammon. Always backgammon.”)
“It was seemingly the only summer event that wasn’t a sales pitch,” writer and man about town Isiah Magsino says of all the warm-weather game nights geared toward a high-income clientele. Though the trend seems to continue well into fall: a permanent backgammon café, 7 Spring Street, recently opened in NoLita where patrons can move checkers while sipping an espresso.
Why are we all rolling the dice on, well, rolling the dice? Part of it speaks to wider societal trends: Americans are drinking way less than they used to, and increasingly looking for social activities that embrace more moderate drinking rather than the binge drinking associated with nightclubs and bars. Kandasamy also has his own theory: it’s an easy, low-stakes way to meet new people without the involvement of an algorithm. “There’s a huge backlash against using apps to meet people. All my single friends say that the apps nowadays—everyone’s so tired of them because you meet weirdos on them. All the people that your parents warned you about,” he says.
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