Glossary

Plain definitions of the backgammon terms the tagging pages lean on — made point, anchor, prime, blot, pip count, contact, and more.

The shared vocabulary used across position tagging, Game Phases, Position Types, and Events. Throughout, "you" / "your" is the side being described and "the opponent" is the other.

Term	Definition
made point	A board point holding two or more of your checkers, so the opponent can't land there. The atom of board structure.
anchor	A made point in the opponent's home board — your back checkers holding a defensive point.
deep anchor	An anchor on the opponent's 1-, 2-, or 3-point — the deepest, most passive anchors. Good for hitting late shots, bad for racing.
advanced anchor	A made point on the opponent's 4-, 5-, or 6-point — a forward anchor that defines a holding game.
golden point	The opponent's 5-point — the single most valuable anchor to hold (and a prized point to make on your own side).
home points made	How many of your own six home-board points are made, from 0 to 6. Six means a closed board.
checkers back	Your checkers at or behind the opponent's most-advanced checker — still stuck in opponent territory and at risk of being trapped.
prime	A run of consecutive made points. A six-long run is a six-prime, an impassable wall; four- and five-primes are nearly as strong.
traps opp	True when at least one opponent checker sits behind your prime in the direction it must travel — i.e. the prime is actually containing something.
outer-board checkers	Your spare checkers sitting in your own outer quadrant — a proxy for how much timing (flexibility) a structure has left. Running low is what flips a structure to late.
contact	Contact is possible while the two armies haven't passed each other, so a hit can still happen. A checker on the bar always counts as contact. No contact means it's a pure race.
on the bar	A checker that has been hit and must re-enter before the player can do anything else.
borne off	A checker already removed from the board. Bearing off all 15 wins the game.
blot	A point holding exactly one checker — hittable by the opponent.
pip count	The total number of pips a player must roll to bring every checker home and bear them all off — the standard measure of who's ahead in the race.
combined pip count	Both players' pip counts added together; a rough clock for how late the game is (it drives the endgame-contact phase).