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Backgammon Literature - Doubling

Posted By: Chris Bray
Date: Tuesday, 12 August 2014, at 5:57 a.m.

is Player 2

score: 7
pip: 107
21 point match
pip: 79
score: 9

is Player 1
XGID=-bDBCBC--a---------bbcabbA:0:0:1:00:9:7:0:21:10
on roll, cube action?

eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10

Following on from yesterday's discussion on literature it is worth noting the dearth of books dedicated to the doubling cube. To my knowledge (and I stand to be corrected) there have been four in the history of the game. In chronological order:

"Dynamic Cube Strategy" Horowitz and Roman (1980)

- Out of Print but largely garbage

"The Doubling Cube in Backgammon Vol 1" Jeff Ward (1982)

- Out of Print but an excellent book (if you find one on eBay, buy it) especially considering when it was written

"Backgammon: Winning with the Doubling Cube" Peter Bell (1997)

- Out of Print (I think) but strewn with errors and misconceptions so not worth buying

"The Backgammon Encyclopedia - Volume 1: Cube Reference Positions" Kit Woolsey (2002)

- Brilliant book and essential to everyone's backgammon library BUT Out of Print and I understand the proofs have been lost so not likely to be reprinted any time soon.

It is now twenty years since the bots arrived and doubling theory has evolved hugely during that time (I recommend reading Jeremy Bagai's 'Classic Backgammon Revisited' to understand just how much doubling theory has changed in a short space of time) but nobody has yet collected all that knowledge and written it down in a structured manner. Any volunteers?

Then maybe it would be easy to solve positions such as the one above taken from the first match of the WC final on Sunday.

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