Czuch Chuckers: The doubling cube takes away much luck of the game and usualy finals are played to 21. A Backgammonmaster introduced it once if I´m right. I think that the realy better player can be determined in a 11 point match up. Indeed there is much decided by luck in backgammon, that makes this game so pleasant to me :). Actually I think that luck and scill is balanced to 50/50 but it depends on the scill finaly, the more you have, the more you can risk a beeing lucky.