Board & Card Game Glossary

69 classic game terms, defined so they make sense on their own — with links to games where you can see each one in action.

Last reviewed 2026-07-16

General Gaming Terms

AI Opponent: An AI opponent is a computer-controlled player that stands in for a human, usually with selectable difficulty levels. Modern AI opponents range from simple rule-based bots to engines that outplay world champions in chess and Go.See it in: chess, checkers, backgammon
House Rules: House rules are informal modifications to a game's official rules that a particular group agrees to play by. They range from bonus rewards on certain squares to altered scoring, and agreeing on them before play begins prevents mid-game disputes.See it in: ludo, crazy eights
PvP: PvP, short for player versus player, describes matches contested between human opponents rather than against computer-controlled ones. Online PvP play typically adds matchmaking, rankings, and real-time turns against people anywhere in the world.See it in: chess, backgammon, spades
Single-Player: Single-player describes a game or mode played by one person against a puzzle, a score target, or the game system itself rather than another human. Classic examples include Peg Solitaire and modern arcade score-chasers.See it in: peg solitaire, snake, word spy
Tiebreaker: A tiebreaker is a predefined rule for producing a single winner when players finish with equal scores. Common tiebreakers include comparing a secondary score, playing a sudden-death round, or awarding the win to whoever reached the shared score first.See it in: yahtzee, spades
Turn Order: Turn order is the sequence in which players take their moves. Many games set it with an opening roll or draw, and because moving first often carries a measurable edge, some games add compensation for later players, such as komi in Go.See it in: ludo, backgammon, go
Variant: A variant is an alternative version of a game that changes rules, setup, or win conditions while keeping the core identity intact. Crazy Eights, for example, circulates in dozens of variants that assign different powers to the special cards.See it in: crazy eights, checkers

Board Game Terms

Anchor: An anchor is a point in the opponent's home board occupied by two or more of your checkers in backgammon. Anchors give checkers hit later in the game a safe landing spot and form the backbone of holding-game and back-game strategies.See it in: backgammon
Atari: Atari is a Go term for a stone or group that has only one liberty remaining and will be captured on the next move unless it escapes or gains liberties. It is loosely comparable to check in chess.See it in: go
Bear Off: Bearing off is the final stage of backgammon, in which a player removes checkers from the board according to dice rolls once all fifteen of their checkers have reached their home board. The first player to bear off all fifteen checkers wins.See it in: backgammon, xii scripta
Blot: A blot is a single checker sitting alone on a backgammon point, exposed to being hit. If an opposing checker lands on it, the blot is sent to the bar and must re-enter the game in the opponent's home board.See it in: backgammon
Casting Sticks: Casting sticks are flat throwing sticks with two distinguishable faces that served as dice in ancient race games such as Senet and Hounds and Jackals. Players throw a set of sticks and count how many land marked-side up to determine movement.See it in: senet, hounds and jackals, royal game of ur
Castling: Castling is the only chess move that relocates two pieces at once: the king moves two squares toward a rook and that rook jumps to the square the king crossed. It is legal only if neither piece has moved, the squares between them are empty, and the king does not start in, pass through, or land on an attacked square.See it in: chess
Checkmate: Checkmate is the position that ends a chess game: the king is under attack and no legal move can eliminate the threat. Delivering checkmate wins immediately, regardless of the material remaining on the board.See it in: chess
Custodian Capture: Custodian capture removes an enemy piece by flanking it on two opposite sides with your own pieces. It is the defining capture method of ancient games such as Roman Latrunculi and Viking Hnefatafl, where pieces are sandwiched rather than jumped or landed on.See it in: hnefatafl, latrunculi
En Passant: En passant is a special chess capture available when an enemy pawn advances two squares from its starting rank and lands directly beside your pawn. Your pawn may capture it as though it had moved only one square, but the right expires if not used immediately.See it in: chess
Forced Capture: Forced capture is a rule that obliges a player to make a capturing move whenever one is available. It is standard in checkers, where jumps are compulsory, and in Fanorona; deliberately feeding a piece into a forced capture is a core sacrificial tactic.See it in: checkers, fanorona
Fork: A fork is a single move that attacks two or more enemy pieces at the same time, so the opponent can save only one of them. In chess the knight is the most feared forking piece because its attacks cannot be blocked.See it in: chess
Gambit: A gambit is an opening in which a player deliberately offers material, most often a pawn, in exchange for faster development, open lines, or attacking chances. The Queen's Gambit and King's Gambit are the classic chess examples.See it in: chess
Gammon: A gammon is a backgammon win worth double the stake, scored when the loser has not borne off a single checker. If the loser also has a checker on the bar or in the winner's home board, the win is a backgammon and is worth triple.See it in: backgammon
King (Crowning): In checkers, a piece that reaches the opponent's back rank is crowned a king, traditionally marked by stacking a second checker on top. Unlike ordinary men, kings may move and capture both forward and backward.See it in: checkers
Ko: Ko is a Go rule that forbids a move which would recreate the board position of the previous turn. It prevents endless single-stone recapture loops and gives rise to ko fights, in which players make threats elsewhere on the board to earn the right to retake.See it in: go
Komi: Komi is the point compensation added to White's score in Go to offset Black's advantage of moving first. Modern komi is commonly 6.5 points under Japanese rules or 7.5 under Chinese rules, with the half point also preventing drawn games.See it in: go
Liberty: A liberty is an empty intersection directly adjacent to a stone or connected group of stones in Go. A group is captured and removed from the board the moment its last liberty is filled by the opponent.See it in: go
Mill: A mill is a row of three of your pieces along a marked line in Nine Men's Morris. Completing a mill entitles you to remove one opposing piece from the board, and strong players build formations that can open and close a mill on successive turns.See it in: nine mens morris, dara
Pin: A pin is a chess tactic in which a piece cannot move, or should not move, because a more valuable piece stands behind it on the same line of attack. A pin against the king is absolute: the pinned piece may not legally move at all.See it in: chess
Pip: A pip is a single spot on a die or domino, and by extension a unit of movement in race games. In backgammon the pip count is the total number of points a player's checkers must still travel to bear off, and comparing pip counts reveals who leads the race.See it in: backgammon, dominoes
Point (Backgammon): A point is one of the 24 narrow triangles on a backgammon board where checkers land and rest. Occupying a point with two or more checkers "makes" the point and blocks opposing checkers from landing there.See it in: backgammon
Rosette: A rosette is a specially marked square on the board of the Royal Game of Ur, a Mesopotamian race game more than 4,000 years old. Landing on a rosette grants an extra roll, and in most reconstructions a piece resting on one is safe from capture.See it in: royal game of ur, senet
Skewer: A skewer is a chess tactic in which a valuable piece is attacked along a line and, when it moves out of danger, a less valuable piece standing behind it is captured. It is often described as a pin in reverse.See it in: chess
Stalemate: Stalemate is a chess position in which the player to move is not in check but has no legal move. Under standard rules stalemate is a draw, which makes engineering one a vital defensive resource in otherwise lost endgames.See it in: chess
Territory: Territory is the empty area of the board surrounded and controlled by one player's stones in Go. At the end of the game each empty intersection of territory is worth one point, and the player with more territory plus captures, adjusted by komi, wins.See it in: go
Zugzwang: Zugzwang is a situation in which a player would prefer to pass but is compelled to move, and every legal move makes their position worse. It is a decisive weapon in chess endgames, where the obligation to move can drag a king off a critical square.See it in: chess

Dice Game Terms

Banking: Banking means voluntarily ending your turn in a push-your-luck dice game to lock in the points scored so far that turn. In Pig, a player banks by choosing to hold; rolling a 1 before banking loses every unbanked point from the turn.See it in: pig, farkle
Doubling Cube: The doubling cube is a six-faced backgammon accessory marked 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 that tracks the stakes of the current game. A player who believes they are ahead may offer a double before rolling; the opponent must either accept the cube at twice the stakes or concede the game at its current value.See it in: backgammon
Farkle: A farkle is a roll that contains no scoring dice in the dice game of the same name. Farkling ends the turn immediately and wipes out every point accumulated during that turn, making it the central risk in the game's push-your-luck decisions.See it in: farkle, pig
Full House: A full house is a dice combination of three of a kind plus a pair, such as 5-5-5-2-2. It scores a flat 25 points in Yahtzee and is also a named scoring category in Generala and Balut.See it in: yahtzee, generala, balut
Push Your Luck: Push your luck is a game mechanic in which a player repeatedly chooses between banking what they have already earned and risking it all for a bigger score. Dice games such as Pig and Farkle are built entirely on this tension between greed and safety.See it in: pig, farkle, higher lower
Shut the Box: Shut the Box is a traditional dice game in which players roll two dice and flip down numbered tiles, usually 1 through 9, whose values sum to the roll. Closing every tile "shuts the box" for an outright win; otherwise the total of the tiles left open counts against the player.See it in: shut the box
Straight (Small/Large): A straight is a run of consecutive values across several dice. In Yahtzee a small straight is any four values in sequence and scores 30 points, while a large straight is five in sequence for 40; Generala and Balut score straights under their own point values.See it in: yahtzee, generala, balut
Yahtzee (Five of a Kind): A Yahtzee is five dice all showing the same value, the highest-scoring roll in the game of the same name, worth 50 points. The equivalent five-of-a-kind roll is called a generala in Generala, where one thrown in a single roll can win the game outright.See it in: yahtzee, generala, balut

Card Game Terms

Bid: A bid is a declaration of how many tricks or points a player or partnership commits to winning in the coming hand. In Spades each player bids a number of tricks, and a partnership that meets its combined bid scores 10 points per bid trick.See it in: spades, bridge
Crib: The crib is an extra four-card hand in cribbage, built from two discards by each player and scored by the dealer after the main hands. Because only the dealer scores the crib, the non-dealer tries to discard cards that are unlikely to combine well.See it in: cribbage
Discard Pile: The discard pile is the face-up stack of cards that players have played or thrown away. In Crazy Eights the top discard determines what may legally be played next, and in many Rummy games players may draw from the discard pile instead of the stock.See it in: crazy eights, indian rummy, durak
Envido: Envido is a betting round in the South American card game Truco, contested over who holds the highest count of same-suit cards. Two cards of one suit score their combined values plus 20, making 33 the highest possible envido.See it in: truco
Finesse: A finesse is a trick-taking technique that attempts to win a trick with a card lower than the best one still outstanding, by betting on where the missing honor sits. A classic bridge finesse leads toward an ace-queen combination and plays the queen, hoping the king lies with the opponent who has already played.See it in: bridge
Follow Suit: To follow suit is to play a card of the same suit as the card that led the trick. Most trick-taking games, including Spades and Bridge, make following suit mandatory whenever possible; only a player with a void may play a different suit.See it in: spades, bridge
Meld: A meld is a group of cards that may be scored or laid down together, typically three or more of a kind or a run in a single suit. Building melds is the central goal of the Rummy family, from Indian Rummy to tile-based relatives such as Mahjong.See it in: indian rummy, tile rummy, mahjong
Nil Bid: A nil bid is a bid of zero tricks in Spades, a promise that the bidder will win no tricks at all during the hand. A successful nil typically earns a 100-point bonus, while taking even a single trick costs the same amount.See it in: spades
Pegging: Pegging is the play phase of cribbage, in which players alternate laying cards and immediately score points for pairs, runs, and running totals of exactly 15 or 31. The name comes from recording scores by moving pegs along the board toward the game-winning 121st hole.See it in: cribbage
Rubber: A rubber is a match unit in bridge won by the first partnership to take two games, each game requiring 100 points from contracts bid and made. Winning the rubber earns a bonus of 700 points if the opponents took no game, or 500 if they took one.See it in: bridge
Ruff: To ruff is to win a trick by playing a trump card when you cannot follow suit. Deliberately creating a void so you can ruff is a standard way to manufacture extra tricks in bridge and Spades.See it in: bridge, spades
Stock: The stock is the face-down pile of undealt cards from which players draw during a game. Rummy players take a card from the stock or the discard pile each turn, while in Durak players refill their hands from the stock after every bout.See it in: durak, indian rummy, crazy eights
Trick: A trick is one round of play in a card game in which each player in turn contributes a single card, and the best card by the game's rules wins the trick for its player. The winner usually collects the cards and leads the next trick.See it in: spades, bridge
Trick-Taking: Trick-taking describes the family of card games organized around winning tricks, rounds in which every player plays exactly one card. Bridge, Spades, and Truco are all trick-taking games, and the family is among the oldest in card play.See it in: spades, bridge, truco
Trump: A trump is a card of a privileged suit that beats every card of every other suit for the duration of a hand. In Spades the trump suit is always spades, bridge selects trumps through bidding, and Durak turns up a trump suit as the deal ends.See it in: spades, bridge, durak
Void: A void is the complete absence of one suit from a player's hand. In trick-taking games a void is an asset: unable to follow suit, the player may ruff with a trump or throw away a losing card.See it in: bridge, spades

Strategy & Theory

Branching Factor: Branching factor is the average number of legal moves available from a position in a game. Chess has a branching factor of roughly 35 while Go's is around 250, which is a major reason Go resisted strong computer play for decades longer than chess.See it in: chess, go
Endgame: The endgame is the final phase of a strategy game, after most forces have been exchanged and the position has simplified. In chess it is the stage where kings become active attacking pieces and promoting a pawn often decides the result.See it in: chess, checkers
Luck vs. Skill Ratio: The luck-versus-skill ratio describes how much of a game's outcome is decided by chance rather than by player decisions. Chess sits at the pure-skill extreme and War at the pure-luck extreme, while dice games such as backgammon reward skill reliably only across many games.See it in: chess, war, backgammon
Midgame: The midgame, also called the middlegame, is the phase between the opening and the endgame, when both sides have developed their forces and the main fight for advantage takes place. Plans, tactics, and piece coordination dominate this stage.See it in: chess, go
Opening: The opening is the first phase of a strategy game, covering the early moves in which players develop their pieces and stake claims on the board. Chess openings are studied so deeply that established sequences carry names, such as the Sicilian Defence.See it in: chess, go
Perfect Information: A game of perfect information is one in which every player can see the complete state of play at all times, with no hidden hands, face-down decks, or simultaneous moves. Chess, Go, and checkers are perfect-information games; most card games are not.See it in: chess, go, checkers
Positional Play: Positional play is a strategic style built on long-term advantages such as piece placement, structure, and control of key squares, rather than immediate tactical strikes. Positional players accumulate small edges that later convert into winning attacks or endgames.See it in: chess, go
Sacrifice: A sacrifice is the deliberate surrender of material in exchange for a positional, tactical, or timing advantage. Sacrifices range from a chess gambit pawn given up for faster development to a checkers piece fed into a forced capture to set up a multiple jump.See it in: chess, checkers
Solved Game: A solved game is one whose result under perfect play by both sides has been mathematically proven. Checkers was solved in 2007 and is a draw with best play; Nine Men's Morris is likewise a proven draw, while Pentago is a proven first-player win.See it in: checkers, nine mens morris, pentago
Tempo: Tempo is the currency of time in strategy games, where one tempo equals one useful move. Gaining a tempo means forcing the opponent to waste a turn, for example by developing a piece while making a threat, and repeated losses of tempo surrender the initiative.See it in: chess, backgammon
Zero-Sum: A zero-sum game is one in which the players' gains and losses always balance to zero, so anything one player wins another must lose. Nearly all classic head-to-head board and card games, from chess to backgammon, are zero-sum.See it in: chess, backgammon
Zwischenzug: A zwischenzug, German for "in-between move", is a surprise move interposed before an apparently forced reply, typically a check or a sharp threat that must be answered first. It often turns a routine exchange into a winning tactic.See it in: chess