During a dark night of backgammon, on an empty fruit stand at the crossroads of some rural route, deep and silent in tobacco county, the devil makes an interesting proposal.

Do you want to start the game with glorious 31s, making your golden point?

Or:

Would you prefer to have ownership of the doubling cube from the get-go?

Two choices. Golden point or cube ownership. Gammons count, yes. The 5pt is the best honest roll. Cube possession, more a sordid emblem of human greed. The now or the later? Either way, the cube owner will toss both dice to get the party going.

Which do you choose?

A tantalizing twist. The permanence of a home board, or the pressure and lucre and blessed annoyance of owning the cube? Both seem powerful. Leap at the chance? But which chance?

Suddenly, one niggling little fact invades your conscious mind. Half or so of your games never strengthen enough to where you want to double. Yet the golden point contributes to daily exercises, the small and the mighty, cube or checker play. How can that not be great?

Possess the cube and every mistake is magnified. Yours and the devil’s. Strategy and tactics. Focus on checker play perfection, or be the maestro of game flow?

Suppose all games begin this way. Make the 5pt. Or take the cube. And suppose … just suppose … the difference in equity happens to be razor thin. A remarkable fair game, n’est ce pas? An honorable proposal made by a devil? Who ordered that?

Then, in that case, select which side of the prop by divining something beyond differences in equity. Your choice becomes a portal into what kind of backgammon player you are. A portal into your gambler soul. You be an accumulator? Then prime all interest onto the capital. Or you strike like snake? Inject the venom of escalating those stakes. Who are you as a player?

Here is a sudden thought. At your next chouette, assign cube ownership to the crew and captain. Grant the box a solid start, the 5pt made. Post Jacoby. Gammons and 5pts make such rocky marriages.

The crew is ready to roll the dice.

Of course the game must be a consulting chouette. Discussion should put maximum pressure on the box. When consensus among the crew finally proclaims the best of it, all-for-one and one-for-all, then quickly you in the box must pre-empt and barter for favorable odds in your miserable plight. You will agree to be the official box for a few games, hobbled with the pesky 5pt, in exchange for the captain and crew giving generous y-to-x odds. Applied during these few games, agreed before, and paid immediately after.

Later, much later, the prop and the odds and the box and the length of stay in it are auctioned once more. Renegotiated, with anyone bidding, for the latest odds in the new box.

Sounds like a fun night.

The perfect gambling ruse.

Assuming, of course, the swap of doubling cube for golden point is fair.

Is it?

The devil says it is.

The devil assures you the prop is fair.

To within a couple pennies in ten dollars. Anyway.

Assures you.

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.

The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

Chouette, anyone?