Backgammon for complete beginners. Part 13 - The doubling cube.

Thirteenth in a series of (hopefully!) easy to follow tutorials on playing backgammon, designed for the absolute beginning player. Please feel free to comment, and ask any questions, and I'll do my best to reply. Thanks for watching :-)

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[Rapchaid]

so if red refuses to take the stakes up to 4, he automatically looses?

[Ensor42]

@Rapchaid Yes, when a player is offered a double, they can either accept to play at the new stakes, or they concede the game then and there for the previous value of the cube. If red rejects the double to 4, he would lose the 2 points there.

[gubbj]

@Ensor42 So when you say red loses the 2 points, it's the 2 points he could've won that black instead wins? So if the game were 0-0, it would now be 0-2 for black?

[Ensor42]

@gubbj Yes, a double offer in backgammon is a bit like a raise in poker - the opponent has to either match the raise (in this case "take"). or fold the hand and lose what it was worth (ie "pass").

[KripDrip]

can you double beyond 64? Is there a limit to how high you can raise the stakes? What happens when it reaches 64 on the doubling cube and I want to double?

[Ensor42]

@KripDrip Quick tip: If you see a game with a doubling cube value of more than 8, or 16 at the outside, then the players almost certainly don't know how to double properly.

[gubbj]

Thanks so much! You're videos are the best out there!

[Ensor42]

@KripDrip Yes, theoretically, there isn't a limit to the potential doubling value, and players would have to agree among themselves, or write the value down or some such, if the doubling went beyond 64. In reality, however, this almost never happens. Firstly, match lengths would very seldom be that high, and the nature of the swings in players fortunes in a given game don't in actuality lead to doubling decisions of that magnitude.

[thegoonist]

excellent explanation!