These are the terms of Long Narde — the ones spoken at the board, and the ones the backgammon dictionary has no word for. Each entry carries its Russian and Turkish equivalent: the table at the end is why this page exists, because nowhere else are these words tied together across languages.
The board
Point — a place on the board where a checker stands. It is usually drawn as a narrow elongated triangle with its base on the long side of the board and its height reaching about halfway across. There are 24 points, 12 on each of the two sides, and each player numbers them their own way: the first point is counted from their own home.
Quarter — half of one half of the board, that is, six points in a row. Quarters are counted along the direction of travel: the first is the one holding the head; the second follows it, and it is the opponent’s bearing-off zone; the third holds the opponent’s head; the fourth is your own bearing-off zone.
Head — the point on which all fifteen of a player’s checkers stand at the start of the game. White and black have different heads, facing each other. A move made from that point is called a move from the head.
Home — six points in a row in a corner of the board, the last ones on the checkers’ path. Until every checker has reached home, bearing off cannot start. Where home sits depends on the variant of the game, not on the board.
Bar — the strip dividing the board down the middle; it is also the border between the home and the outer field.
Checkers and the move
Checker — what the game is played with: fifteen each, 30 on the board. They are also called stones, and they are made of bone, wood or plastic.
Die — a cube with one to six pips on its faces; a pair is always rolled.
Move — shifting checkers by the numbers rolled. The numbers are two separate moves, not one long one.
Double — a roll showing the same number on both dice.
Pip — the unit of distance: a checker travels as many points as the pips rolled. The same word names the score of a match, and the ambiguity has to be kept in mind: «pip difference» is about the race, «a two-point win» is about the score.
Bear off — taking a checker off the board once all of a player’s checkers have reached home. Such a move is described as throwing a checker off.
Formations
Wall — several of your own checkers standing on consecutive points. Both two checkers side by side and a solid row of three to six are called a wall — and it is the long wall that blocks the opponent’s road.
Trapped checker — a checker with nowhere to go: every point it could move to is held by the opponent.
Landing points of the head — the points reachable from the head with one rolled number.
Spare moves — having moves you can play without leaving an important point. Move shortage is the same thing with the opposite sign: no spare moves are left and an important point has to be opened. Shortage is split into alarming and not alarming: the alarming kind opens the fields that guard against Mars.
Blot — a point held by a single opposing checker.
How the game ends
A win in Long Narde comes in degrees, and each degree has its own name.
Oin — a plain win: the loser managed to bear at least one checker off the board. The score of such a game is 1:0, that is, one point.
Mars — a win in which the loser bore off no checker at all. The score is 2:0, two points, twice the price of a plain win.
Home Mars — a Mars in which the loser did at least bring all of their checkers home but bore none off. It usually carries no separate weight: it is a Mars with a name of its own.
Coke — a position in which the loser failed to move even one checker out of their starting quarter.
A draw is possible only by tournament regulation: the players take half a point each, or a point each — as the regulation says, not as the rules of the game do.
Where the sources disagree
Oin and Mars are in every source. About the other two terms the sources say different things, and it is worth knowing before you sit down with a stranger.
- Coke. By some sources it does not exist in Long Narde at all: the position they name that way counts as an ordinary Mars, and no results exist beyond Oin and Mars. By others, Coke is used occasionally and pays 3 points.
- Home Mars. The same story: by some sources it is an ordinary Mars with a special name, by others a separate result worth 4 points.
There is one practical conclusion: if you play for score, agree on these two results before the game starts.
The three-language table
The forms come from the localisation of our own app — it has been through live players in all three languages, which cannot be said of any website, this one included. A term the app does not have is absent from the table too: an invented translation is worse than a missing one.
| Term | English | Русский | Türkçe |
|---|---|---|---|
| point | Point | Пункт | Hane |
| head | Head | Голова | Baş |
| home | Home | Дом | Ev |
| checker | checker | Шашка | Pul |
| die | Die | Кость | Zar |
| pip | pip | Очко | Puan |
| bear off | bear off | Вывод | Toplama |
| plain win | Oin | Оин | Normal |
| mars | Mars | Марс | Mars |
| home mars | Home Mars | Домашний марс | Evde Mars |
| coke | Coke | Кокс | Koks |
Two notes on the table. English has no word for Oin — it simply says «a one-point
win», and Oin in the English column is a borrowing, not a translation. The Turkish
Normal is not carelessness: Turkish tradition has no separate word for a plain win,
and the app honestly calls it ordinary.
Other names for the game
Long Narde is one of the varieties of nardy, and what separates it from the short game is neither the size of the board nor the number of checkers, but the rules. You will meet the names «nardy», «long nardy», «nard», «nardi»; neighbouring traditions have their own — Fevga, Gulbar. The fast-paced variety is called «mad nardy».