The Doubling Cube in the Game of Backgammon

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Grady Johnson and I am a competition backgammon player and today I am representing expertvillage.com. Now I would like to talk a little bit about the doubling cube. Now a lot of people know the game of backgammon and they never really understood what this cube is for but when you are in competition this becomes very, very important because it does add a whole another level to this game. Now with the doubling cube, it is a matter of challenging your competition to how good their game is actually doing. So at the beginning of the game, you start off with one point and you begin your play. When you see that your game is going well, you can then at that point decide that you want to up the stakes and double it. Each individual game of backgammon is fun to play but when you put them together in a tournament style competition it can get extremely interesting and could go on for hours. Now one of the things that you will do with the doubling cube is starting your game with one point. Now as the game proceeds and the game starts to go well for one player or the other, the player will then challenge the other player and say okay look, I am pulling it out, I am going to double this game and place that doubling cube out on the two. Now the game is no longer worth one point it is worth two. Now the opponent who has been challenged has the option of either accepting that challenge or paying the other opponent right away or accepting the loss of one point depending on which game you were playing. Now if you begin to play that game and the advantage really starts to swing your way and you can see that you are probably going to beat them, you might decide at that time to re-double. He cannot double on you again and no matter how good his game goes but if your game goes good you have the option of doubling again and then you are even in a better position because you know the game is further along and you have a better chance of winning. That would effectively bring the game up to a four. Now it is worth four points instead of the original one. We have doubled it twice. Remember though if you do redouble you better be sure that you can beat him. A lot of really crafty backgammon players too will lure you into that trap to try and get you to redouble that way they will hit you with another redouble which can get a little frightening. There are some other variations, some automatic doubles and some other rules that apply here, we will go over those a little later but that is basically how your doubling cube does work."