“T” Backgammon Terms

Too many points.

A position which you should not double, even though your opponent has a clear drop, because your equity is higher by playing on for a gammon.

An inflexible position with many made points and few spare checkers. Seven is usually "too many."

To temporarily land on an intermediate open point after playing one of two numbers with the same checker.

An rule rarely used today in Western backgammon, though it is common in the Middle East. The rule requires that once you touch a checker (other than to adjust it) you must move that checker, and once you remove your hand from a properly played checker, that checker must remain where it was played. See this thread and this thread.

A formal competition among multiple entrants in which a winner is decided.

The person who organizes and oversees a tournament.

A game popular in seventeenth-century France in which players have just three checkers each and play only on their own side of the board.  See: How to Play Tourne-case.

The player who is behind in a match or behind in the race (2).  Compare: Leader.

Reaching the same position by different means.

A deliberate attempt to squeeze the opponent off of his anchor so that the trapper can close out any blots thereby exposed and win a gammon.

Traditional name for the three-point.

Playing a position out to the end of the game once (or to the point of truncation). A rollout consists of multiple trials, the results of which are averaged together to yield an estimate of the equity of the position.

Another name for the effective pip count, a concept developed by Walter Trice who wrote extensively about it.

[Named for Walter Trice.]  The ideal position to aim for during bear-in, consisting of: 7 checkers on your six-point, 5 checkers on your five-point, and 3 checkers on your four-point. It has the lowest wastage of any position with all 15 checkers still on the board.

A game popular in French high society prior to the Revolution. Players score points for making specific plays or moving their checkers into certain configurations.  See: How to Play Trictrac.

The French name for "backgammon."

Backgammon (2).

Traditional name for the three-point.

A rollout which is not played to the end of the game. Instead, the position is rolled out a given number of plies (the horizon of the rollout) and estimates of the equities of the resulting positions are averaged together. A truncated rollout has more systematic error than a full rollout but is faster because each trial is shorter, and a truncated rollout has less variance so fewer trials are required to converge on a result. See post by Gregg Cattanach.

The sequence of actions that each player takes in alternation. One turn consists of: (a) possibly offering a double; (b) rolling the dice; (c) playing the roll; and (d) picking up the dice.