What is a backgammon six-point?

The basics of playing backgammon are simple: Get your pieces to your ‘home’ and get them off the board before your opponent does. If along the way you would like to eat some of your opponent’s pieces, that’s fine. Really, you already know what the backgammon six-point is; you just don’t know that that’s what it’s called.

The first point that your pieces come to in your ‘home’ is your six-point. The backgammon six-point means safety, it means that your pieces are home, and unless your opponent has a piece in your quadrant of the backgammon board, that piece that has raced around the entire board is finally safe from being eaten.

When playing backgammon, as with any strategy game, you must have an end game in mind right from the beginning – the backgammon six-point is your end game. The six-point is what the whole game is about; the purpose of the battles fought on the rest of the backgammon board. Only once all your pieces have reached your six-point can you start to think about the sweet taste of victory.

The only point of caution in successfully bringing your pieces round to your six-point is to be weary of taking any of your opponent’s pieces too close to the end. Once you have got all your pieces home, you don’t want to lose one by them, with your opponent jumping into your ‘home’ quadrant at the 90th minute. Remember that the backgammon six-point is a taste of the end of the game, but only a taste!