What's up, Backgammon fans? In this blog post, we're gonna talk a little bit about the basics of Backgammon terminology. This post will be especially useful for beginner Backgammon players, giving them a kick-start!

To start with the most basic elements of backgammon, these pieces are called checkers:

They all have the same ability to move and the same characteristics. The checkers are placed on points. So, the triangular shapes represent points on the board. If you have two checkers on a point, it means that you own it, which is called both making a point and making an anchor.

We usually call it an anchor if the point is by itself. If points are made in consecutive order to block your opponent's back checkers, we call that a prime or a blockade.

These ones are the back checkers:

The moment that they escape, for instance, when they make an advanced anchor on the bar point, they’re not necessarily back checkers anymore, but instead, outfield checkers.

All the points have numbers. From Blue's point of view; the point where White’s back checkers are placed would be the 1 point, increasing one by one up to the 24 point, the point where Blue’s back checkers are placed in White's inner board.

From White’s point of view, Blue’s 24 point would be White’s 1 point. In addition, we have nicknames for all these points. For example, we call this one the bar point because it's up against the bar:

Then we’ve got the golden point; that's the 5 point, named by Paul Magriel because the golden point is the most important point in the game of Backgammon, at least because of the starting position. It’s next point you want to make:

Next, we have the midpoint, or the 13 point, which is called that way because it's midway through the board. That's where 5 checkers begin in the starting position:

We call the 1 point also as the ace point, and the 2 point as the deuce point, just like a game of cards.

Then, we have some funny names for the checkers, depending on where they are placed. A checker alone on a point is called a blot. But depending on its potential, we can give it another name. For instance, these two checkers would be called builders since they have the potential to build the next point in our prime:

Another name for the checkers: Let's imagine that the builders came up here:

They are still builders, but now we also name them attackers because these checkers can be used to make a blitz attack like the following:

Apart from being a builder or an attacker, they can simply just be spare checkers. A spare checker is a checker that's on a point that was already made. As we saw earlier, making a point, or making an anchor means having two checkers on a point; namely, owning that point. If we’ve got a point with two checkers on it, then it's a stripped point. Stripped points do not have any spare checkers. The moment we put a checker more, that's a spare checker. We can now use that checker to build or attack, without the risk of breaking the point .

Furthermore, if we have five checkers or more on a point, we call it a stack or a candlestick (because each time we put more checkers, it's like dripping, slowly building a candlestick). You should know that we want to avoid stacks since they are very inflexible.

There's one more term for the checkers: If blue were to play this play, he would be slotting the 5 points:

So, just like putting a coin in a slot machine, you're slotting a point you want to make. In this case, this checker would be called a slot.

Then, we’ve got the hit. In Backgammon, we hit checkers and put them on the bar:

The last concept we will cover is the bear off. Let's say Blue got all his checkers into his home board. We can now say that he is in the bear off:

Then, the checkers go to the bear off tray. That's where all your checkers go when you get all of them into your home board:

So, that was all for today’s post — the absolute basics of Backgammon Terminology. The terms you learned in this post will be truly useful especially if you're a beginner eager to explore the exciting world of Backgammon!

You can see the full video here!

Backgammon Terminology

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