2021 - Position 204

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Match Play. Red trails 2-3 to 5. Should Red double? If doubled, should White take?

In a money game a double here would be grossly premature.

However, doubling kills the cube and Red’s gammons give him the match. So this becomes a classic 3-away vs 2-away double.

Meanwhile White has problems: a poorly structured home board: the stack of checkers on the mid-point; the two checkers stranded on Red’s 2-pt behind a solid Red structure and finally the loose checker on Red’s 9-pt.

All of these factors contribute to White losing a gammon 21% of the time and means the correct action for White is to drop the double, albeit not by much.