There are certain rules in place in games and sports that protect the integrity of the game. Football for example is one such sport with the offside rule. Can you imagine for a minute what would happen in football without the offside rule? There would be absolutely nothing to prevent a team from placing someone on the opposing team’s goal line while the play was at the other end of the pitch. Then the defending team would have to counter that by bringing players back and so on and so on until the entire game broke down into a complete farce.
The offside rule prevents this and in backgammon then there is a rule in place that was named after the famous backgammon player Oswald Jacoby. The rule is that a player cannot win a gammon unless the cube has been offered and taken during the course of the game. The rule was basically brought in to speed up the game when players were playing on for gammons in dominating positions rather than using the cube. So now if a player gains a crushing edge early in the game then he simply doubles and takes his point when the opponent drops.
There is no advantage to playing on as the player cannot gammon or backgammon. You can imagine games being played without the Jacoby rule? Players would be grinding long games out to make gammons and backgammons and each game would increase hugely in length. This would especially be the case in cash game play where a stronger player would have less incentive to double because he could outplay his opponent anyway with sheer checker play and nothing else…..the Jacoby rule prevents this.
