D/T OmahaDonk
D/T TomCowley
D/T Wamy Einehouse
N/T Joe123
N/T Miran
D/T RealNick
D/T NetWorth
D/T Uberkuber
N/T ClassicalGuiter23
D/T Taper_Mike
D/T HiGoneFive
D/T LoveInVain (2nd post)
D/T DoubleDouble1984
?/T AlphaFish
D/P Kruidenbuiltje

D/P 1 vote
D/T 10 votes
N/T 3 votes
?/T 1 vote

Two contradictory thoughts:

1. The "group mind" is so often right on this site that I would not like to bet against it here.
   
   
2. I feel that the D/T is so obvious that the "QF" (quiz factor) makes me suspect that another answer is correct.

The voting indicates that the doubling decision may be in question, but in case the group has it wrong, I suspect that it is the choice to take that is questionable. Something I said in my original post is worthy of more discussion, "The fact that Black’s back men are split adds real power to this position. Fully half of Black’s rolls allow him to make an inside point, and simultaneously to bring a checker within range of a direct shot on White’s outside blot."

HiGoneFive described my feeling the best, "Good initial double, and a not an easy, but clearcut take." With more checkers in the zone, this switches to a pass very quickly.

1) Bill might throw a curveball at us and use reverse psychology, therefore cancelling the quiz factor effect;

2) The quiz factor often applies on checker play problems, but less often on cube problems. I haven't checked, but I think that a majority of the cube problems posted here by Bill have resulted in a D/T answer, which isn't that surprising because I would think that the most common cube action will be D/T, especially when the game is played by world-class players, since they usually know how to trigger efficient doubles. Basically, they have a good feel for the doubling window.

Just my 2c, but to my extremely limited mind, if this problem is anything other than a D/T then it is probably by a very slight margin, and also in such a way that it is quite a unique problem - I really can't see many lessons to be learnt here that would help anyone other than a truly world class player if it is not D/T (and I'm a long way of world class so my analysis might be lolbad).

I would guess that to anyone but the bots/world's best, the mistakes made by passing/not doubling here in similar spots are so large that any small difference in this specific problem will soon be mitigated by huge future errors made by anyone who cannot deal with the very finest nuances of Backgammon.

Keenly awaiting the solution.

Will this be a position for down- and upgrading?

For example:

-put the black checker back on the ace
-or put the white checker in the outfield back on the midpoint
-or put a black checker from the midpoint on the 8 point.