Dr. Chien specializes in reshaping his patients’ eyes to create a crease in the upper eyelid. Some patients select him after hearing about his Donkey Kong prowess. This is not so silly, he said, since good gamers make good surgeons and vice versa. Also, compared to the pressure of competitive Konging, he said, eyelid surgeries and tummy tucks are a breeze.

“For both gaming and surgery, you have to have a focused personality and be very precise,” he said. “They both take foresight and good reflexes, and a lot of strategy and planning and timing.”

Still, Dr. Chien keeps no Donkey Kong machine in his office, a snazzy, spalike suite trimmed with frosted glass, high up in a building just off teeming Main Street.

He got hooked on Donkey Kong after seeing “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” the popular 2007 documentary about competitive practitioners of this classic arcade game, which pits a large ape called Donkey Kong against Mario, Nintendo’s famous Italian-American plumber-hero. Dr. Chien started playing first on his home computer, and then on the only Donkey Kong machine he could find in the city: at Barcade in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with its rows of retro video games and array of micro-brews.

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There, on Wednesday night, he chatted with the bartender, Alexis Neophytides, who — this being Williamsburg — is also a filmmaker. She wound up making a short documentary about Dr. Chien last year: “Doctor Kong: Cutting Up the Competition.”

“Hank is royalty here,” said George Leutz, 37, a customer at Barcade. “When he walks in, you hear the whispers going around, ‘Hey, that’s Hank Chien.’ ”

Dr. Chien eyed the Donkey Kong game against the wall, and a woman at the bar seemed to automatically pull a quarter out of her handbag and press it into his palm. Dr. Chien pumped it into the machine and he was off, hurdling barrels rolled at him by Donkey Kong.

The woman with the quarters walked over — she was Dr. Chien’s girlfriend, Youmee Im, 33, a finance executive — and when Dr. Chien got too distracted, she finished his sentences for him.

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His left hand jiggled the directional knob, and his right hand jabbed at the jump button, maneuvering the Mario character up a course of inclines and ladders to try to rescue the damsel in distress from the big gorilla. The way the game is set up, the player never gets the girl, but Dr. Chien did manage to win over Ms. Im, a pretty mean Centipede player herself, with his gaming prowess, after impressing her on dates two years ago.

At the bar, Mr. Leutz said he was inspired by Dr. Chien to go after one of the most enduring marks in gaming: a 1983 world record of 33,273,520 points on one quarter in Q*bert, which requires about 70 hours of continuous play. He recently logged 57 hours straight before collapsing, but for his next attempt, he wants Dr. Chien to surgically implant a catheter to reduce the need for bathroom breaks. They discussed other surgical procedures that might help hardcore gamers.

“Cut my eyelids off,” Mr. Leutz yelled, and everyone laughed — Dr. Chien loudest of all.