Backgammon Doubling Cube, Explained Badly
Two players on a Saturday means backgammon, and backgammon with the doubling cube is a different game from the one most people learned on holiday. The cube sits in the middle showing 64, meaning one point. Before rolling, a player who thinks they are ahead may turn it to 2 and offer it. The opponent either takes, and the game is now worth two points with the cube on their side, or drops, conceding one point. Only the player holding the cube may double next, to 4, and so on. It turns a game of luck into a game of judgment about luck, which is why we like it.
We played a match to seven points. Final score 7 to 4, over nine games, which took about two hours and ten minutes with a break for the kettle. The games were mostly short, which is what the cube does: two were dropped at the first double, three were taken and won by the doubler, one was taken and turned around by a late hit, and the last was a gammon at 2, worth four points, that ended the match in one go.
The hour we wasted was about the Crawford rule. One of us insisted it meant no doubling at all once a player reached six points. The other, correctly as it turned out when we checked the rulebook in the box lid, said the cube is out for exactly one game after a player first reaches match point, and comes back after that. We had been playing a version where the trailing player could never double again, which made the end of the match far duller than it should be. It is now written on the inside of the board in pencil.
Two more house notes for two-player nights. First, we use a dice cup, both players, every roll, after an incident last year that neither of us wants to relive. Second, the automatic double on an opening tie, where both players roll the same number and the cube goes to 2 before anyone moves, is off by agreement. It adds swing without adding decision, and we are not here for swing.
The board, for the record, is a cork-lined one found in a charity shop with one missing checker that we replace with a coat button. The button has won more than its share.