I believe the position posted at the end of this is the position you're speaking of. This question arose recently on the dailygammon forums. Since I don't think people can see those forums without an account there I will paste what I replied there.
At post Crawford odd away your opponent has what is referred to as a 'free take'. You can see why if you look at 1 away 3 away post Crawford. If 3a doubles and you take he has to win that game and then another to win the match. (assuming no gammons) However, if you were to drop then next game he would double immediately and it would be double match point. By dropping in the odd away Crawford games you can potential give away a ton of equity.
Basically, as long as the gammons and wins for the non 1 away player don't add up to 97% or more, you have a take.
I always wait to cube when I'm playing an opponent that may not know. Here on DG I have pulled off a couple freebies. For example this was dropped:
XGID=-aBBBBBB------A---A---dAe-:0:0:1:00:2:6:0:7:10
Once you double you're at what's commonly referred to as Gammon Go. Given this score, you should have definitely slotted with the opening 21 playing 13/11 6/5.
There will be many recommendations I suspect on helping you with the cube. Depending on how you prefer to learn the short version is there are tons of articles online addressing cube use, you could buy books, you can get and use a bot (GNU is free, XG is cheap and excellent), you could take lessons from someone like myself or one of the other teachers over at The bg learning center. You can always feel free to ask questions here on the forums and I'm sure you'll get a lot of feedback and help.
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