“S” Backgammon Terms

The last lone checker heading for home.

Pure race.

The overall, long range plans for a game. The reasoning behind a play. See: Game Plan.  Compare: Tactics.

A position barren of spare checkers or builders and thus prone to awkward numbers; too many points.

To remove all but two checkers from a point (1).

A position barren of spare checkers or builders and thus prone to awkward numbers.

To deliberately make an illegal play or otherwise take an unfair advantage.

A home board with several made points.

A play which makes a strong point.

To purposely leave a blot to be hit so it can be recirculated. The idea is to improve your timing or shore up your defense in the opponent's home board. Also known as a Hara-Kiri play.

Swedish Backgammon Federation.   Website: www.sbgf.se.

A backgammon variant in which players can win by arranging their checkers into specific patterns within their home board.  See: How to Play Swedish Tables.

The difference in score between winning a game and losing it.

The difference in your equity before a roll and after it, or the difference between rolling poorly and rolling well.

A position with many gaps and few adjacent made points.

A method of pairing players in a tournament. Under the Swiss system, players are not eliminated, no player meets the same opponent twice, and successive rounds match players with scores as similar to each other as possible. See post by Osman Guner.

To give up one point (2) to make another, usually in your home board.

The roll of 1-6 to escape a prime, usually from the bar and often hitting a blot.

Consolation flight.

Bias introduced in a rollout because of errors in checker play (2) or cube play (2).