Double or Nothing

I've liked backgammon since I was a kid, but never thought much of it until a book about backgammon theory found its way into my hands and opened my eyes to the depths of strategy and thought contained in that deceptively simple game.  One day on the road, I mentioned this to Andy Bailey, and he said, "Dude!  I love backgammon!  You should totally get a set next time we're in town and we'll totally play all the time on the next road trip!  Wanna make it interesting?  We can play for a quarter a game!"

I had never gambled on backgammon (or anything else as far as I can remember), but a quarter a game seemed pretty harmless, and I did want to test the book's theory about the strategic effects of the doubling cube on multi-game series, and a stake was the best way to do it, so I agreed.

The next time we were in Vancouver, I went to my favourite game geek store in Gastown and picked up, for 20 bucks, the set that I use to this day.  Not a cheap-o magnetic travel set, it's a genuine (well, synthetic) felt board and stone pieces, but light and compact.  Let the games begin.

Andy, Andy.  So excitable, so impulsive.  Poor guy couldn't say "no" to a double, or, after a lucky roll or two, keep his fingers off the doubling cube himself.  So you see (if you know anything about the game) that a measly 25 cents a game can easily turn into two dollars with the doubling cube on 8, were it usually ended up.   Sometimes it would get to 16, and finally on one very memorable occasion, all the way to 64, when a single game almost paid off my investment.  We played almost every night after work and every Sunday on the road from then on, and his tab just kept growing and growing.

Not that Andy was a bad player, mind you.  Just reckless.  I didn't mind taking his money, since he was obviously having such a good time.  In fact, of all the guys (and gal) I worked with back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, Andy Bailey was the most fun.  Fun was Andy's middle name.  Oh, the stories I could tell (and hopefully will).  His choice of songs for karaoke night at a redneck bar.  Scoring a bag of weed at . . . oh, I think I'll just leave you hanging for now.

All told, I made about $80 over the course of a month or so.  Not what one would call riches, but it certainly came in handy back then considering I wasn't exactly selling hundreds of encyclopedia sets.