From a thundery Swavesey chouette: the last game of the night was a topsy-turvy affair, culminating in this cube action:

XGID=-CBDC-a—–A-Baa-abbbcb–:3:1:1:D:0:0:3:0:10

After some muttering along the lines of “what’s our worst roll?” (51, which we didn’t realise, and a clue to what was going on), all of the team except Caroline redoubled, and Michael gamely took. We went on to win, but, as seasoned backgammoners will have already guessed, those making the right decision were punished. This is a bad redouble by 214 stupids, according to a rollout.

What an unpleasant surprise! we had thought the double obvious. After all, white is 17 ahead in the race, and has some immediate hits that look like market losers.

It turns out, though, that red has magnificent hit equity even when put on the bar. After a 64, for example, red is fairly likely to come back in, say with a 61:

XGID=-CCDC-a——-Baa–cbbcb–:3:1:1:D:0:0:3:0:10

This looks a lot less friendly. It’s not hard to believe red manages a hit around a third of time (I cannot be bothered to check this, but there are 40% wins in total).

Going back to the original problem: not enough market losers, and not enough wins! So no double.