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Gammon = A finished game, where the player who lost has not borne off any checkers. The winner receives 2 times the value of the doubling cube.......
Backgammon = A finished game, where the player who lost has not borne off any checkers AND still has one or more checkers on the bar or in the home board of the winner. The winner receives 3 times the value of the doubling cube........
Doubling cube = A hypothetical cube is used with values 1, 2, 4, 8, 16,....,2^n (Many times maximum is for n=6 that is 64 but Yahoo had 512).
At the start of the game both players own the cube that has a starting value=1.
At any point of the game***, except the starting move, and exactly before one player's turn (before the player rolls the dice to start his turn) a doubling offer can be made by one player to his opponent to continue playing at twice of the current game value.
-The opponent may refuse the double, in which case he resigns the game and loses the current game's value.
-Otherwise the opponent accepts the double, in which case the game continues at twice of the game's value(because cube's value has been doubled), with the opponent having the ownership of the doubling cube, that now has the double value of what had before.
After a double, only the player that most recently accepted a double (the player who owns the cube) may redouble.
Game value =
1)If we don't have a Gammon or a Backgammon then the game value = value of the doubling cube.
2)If we have a Gammon situation then the game value = 2· value of the doubling cube.
3)If we have a Backgammon situation then the game value = 3· value of the doubling cube.
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***And except some other situations that i will describe here. These situations are the Crawford rule. I don't know if Crawford rule will be applied here at Brainking but i hope so, because it's the best way to deal with some positions..........
So the situations where a player CAN'T double when it is his turn, is when we have a Crawford game.
A Crawford game is a game in which the leading player has FOR THE FIRST TIME a match score, one point behind of gaining the victory. For example in a 11 point match, the player A wins 9-4 and has won a 1-point game so he now leads 10-4. The game that would follow will be a Crawford game and neither player can double. After the Crawford game AND if of course the leading player hasn't won, there would not be any other Crawford game and doubling cube can be used........
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As for the rules flaw, the rule is simple: You should use the maximum number of the dice possible!
If you have a 52 for example and you can use both you should do it.
If you can use/play "5 but not 2" OR "2 but not 5", then you should use/play the "5 but not 2" as then you would use/play 5 pips and not only 2 as in the other case........
Brainking will let you play in a similar situation (incorrectly of course) the "2 but not 5" instead of only letting you play the "5 but not 2".......
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