The vocabulary, without assuming you already know it.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Point | One of the twenty-four triangles a checker sits on. |
| Blot | A single checker alone on a point, and therefore able to be hit. |
| Made point | A point held by two or more of your checkers; your opponent cannot land there. |
| Anchor | A made point inside your opponent's home board — a safe landing spot for your back checkers. |
| The bar | The ridge down the middle where hit checkers wait to re-enter. |
| Home board | Your last six points, where checkers must gather before bearing off. |
| Bear off | To remove a checker from the board once all fifteen are home. |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prime | Consecutive made points. A full prime of six cannot be jumped by any die. |
| Blitz | Attacking quickly — hitting and closing home board points to trap a checker on the bar. |
| Back game | Deliberately holding two anchors deep in the opponent's home board, playing for a late hit. |
| Race | A position with no contact left, where only the pip count matters. |
| Golden point | Your 5-point — generally the most valuable single point on the board. |
| Bar point | Your 7-point, next to the bar; strong because it extends a prime. |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Gammon | A win worth 2 points, when the loser has borne off nothing. |
| Backgammon | A win worth 3 points, when the loser has borne off nothing and is still on the bar or in the winner's home board. |
| Doubling cube | The die recording the stake, offered rather than rolled. |
| Take / Drop | Accepting a double, or conceding the current stake instead. |
| Beaver | Redoubling immediately while keeping the cube — not used in all rulesets. |
| Crawford game | The one game played without the cube after a player reaches within a point of winning the match. |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pip | One point of movement. Your pip count is the distance left to bring every checker home. |
| Equity | The average points a position is worth, counting gammons and backgammons. |
| Rollout | Playing a position out many times to measure how it actually scores, rather than estimating it. |
| Ply | One level of lookahead. A 2-ply search considers your move and every reply to it. |
Terms make more sense attached to a position than to a definition.
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