These are the terms of backgammon — the ones spoken at the board and the ones you need in order to read game analyses. Each entry carries its Russian and Turkish equivalent: the table at the end ties them together across languages.
The board and the equipment
Checker — one of the fifteen markers of a single colour that a player moves around the board by the rolls of the dice. It is also called a piece.
Die — the cube that decides a move. A die is said to be cocked if it does not land flat on the playing surface on the thrower’s side; such a roll is taken again. The dice are thrown from a cup of leather, plastic or wood.
Bar — the raised ridge down the middle of the board that divides the inner table from the outer one. Checkers that have been hit are placed on it.
Home board — the quadrant holding your one-point through six-point: the one a player brings the checkers into before bearing off.
Bar-point — a player’s seven-point, so named because it sits next to the bar.
Formations
Anchor — a point in the opponent’s home board held by two or more of your checkers. A high anchor is the 21, 20 or 19 point, sometimes the 18; a low anchor is the 24, 23 or 22.
Prime — six consecutive points with two or more checkers on each. Such a wall cannot be jumped by any roll.
Hitting
Blot — a lone checker on a point, open to being hit.
Direct shot — a chance to hit a blot no more than six points away with a single number on one die. A combination shot needs both numbers together — that is an indirect shot.
Loose hit — a hit that leaves the hitter a blot in their own home board, exposed to a direct return shot.
Comeback shot — a chance to hit the opponent’s blot right after being hit yourself, in particular straight from the bar.
The course of the game
Contact game — a position in which the players’ checkers have not yet passed each other and hitting is still possible.
Blitz — an attack on an opponent who has no anchor: the aim is to put as many of their checkers on the bar as possible and close your own board.
Ace-point game — a late stage of the game in which a player holds an anchor on the opponent’s one-point and waits for a shot while the opponent brings the checkers home and bears them off.
Bear off — taking checkers off the board at the end of the game: whoever takes all fifteen off first wins.
Pip — the unit of distance: the total a player still has to move to bring the checkers home and bear them off is called the pip count.
Stakes and score
Doubling cube — a special die a little larger than a regular one, with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 on its faces. It raises the stakes during a game; often it is simply called the cube.
Gammon — a win over an opponent who bore off no checker at all: two points.
Backgammon — the same, but the loser also still has a checker on the bar or in the winner’s home board: three points. Such a win is called a triple game.
The three-language table
The forms come from the localisation of our own app — it has been through live players in all three languages. A term the app does not have is absent from the table too.
| Term | English | Русский | Türkçe |
|---|---|---|---|
| point | Point | Пункт | Hane |
| checker | checker | Шашка | Pul |
| die | Die | Кость | Zar |
| home | Home | Дом | Ev |
| bar | bar | Бар | bar |
| bear off | bear off | Вывод | Toplama |
| pip | pip | Очко | Puan |
| doubling cube | Doubling cube | Куб удвоения | İkiye katlama küpü |
| gammon | Gammon | Гаммон | Gammon |
| backgammon | Backgammon | Бэкгаммон | Backgammon |
One note on the table: the word «backgammon» means both the game itself and the triple win in it. That is not our carelessness but a property of the English term, and in running text the two have to be told apart by the sense of the sentence.