I’ve been playing euro-style board games for years and have recently started playing Backgammon. I’m interested in game design and always pick apart games to see what makes them work or not, how to reduce or increase luck, etc… What I can’t understand about Backgammon is the rule that allows twice the move if a player rolls doubles. Why make a dice-based game more dependent on luck? Sure it allows a behind player to "get lucky"and catch up, but the player still has a chance to catch up if they developed their board right. Here is a game with a serious tournament following and it seems like there’s the equivalent of a Free Parking space, ala Monopoly. Is there something I’m missing?
I can’t speak to the original motivation, but injecting luck into games of skill tends to keep the less skillful players playing. This is especially valuable in poker. If the best starting hand always won, the game wouldn’t be very interesting. To make a good gambling game, you want an element of skill that skews the long-term results in a game that, in the short term, is dominated by luck. Games of pure skill, like Chess, tend to select out only the very good players, and aren’t of much use in gambling unless you ‘hustle’ people by hiding your skill until they’re ready to bet against you.