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BGonline.org Forums
Terminology
Posted By: Nack Ballard In Response To: Terminology (Tom Keith)
Date: Tuesday, 27 April 2010, at 11:04 p.m.
Thank you for your input, Tom.
This is an old problem; the situation is complicated by the word "move" having two definitions.
At the chess wikipedia, there is only one definition given:
Move
A full move is a turn by both players, white and black.
A turn by either white or black is a half-move, or one ply.When a game is transcribed and the moves listed, move #1 is a play (or ply) by both black and white, then move #2 is a play by both black and white. Both players have played twice; there have been two full moves made and that is the way it is counted. Similarly, in backgammon, when games are transcribed, it is standard (or at least it was for decades, back when I was playing over matches), for people to refer to a "32-move game" as one consisting of 32 rolls by each of the two players. For example, this game sequence is 27 moves (or some call it 26 1/2). It is proper, as Daniel did, to number the full moves, not the half moves (rolls).
OTOH, your definition of "move" is also correct. One often hears, in both chess and backgammon, "He played the best move," obviously referring to a move by one player.
I used the term "move" in the full move sense here and here. The issue of usage only arise when I wrote six "rolls" here and Bob asked for clarification (i.e., by one player or both?). It probably didn't help Bob that Henrik said "10 rolls" here when he could have written "10 moves" or "10 rolls by each player," though he quickly corrected himself in another post.
Indeed, these are miniature lessons that when using "rolls," it helps to spell out the meaning anyway. I see that I used "Three-roll" in the title of this post (perhaps because Phil, Ray and others had been talking about getting all one's checkers to one's side of the board in three rolls). If I had to do it over again, I would have used "Six-roll" or "Three-move" for the title, though we all clarified what we meant in our texts (i.e., three rolls by each player).
For short sequences, I tend to say "rolls." For long sequences (around five moves / ten rolls or more), I tend to say "moves" (though I still try to remember to clarify either word if not already obvious in context.)
IMO, it would be helpful if the one-ply definition of "move" were added to the chess wikipedia and if the two-ply definition of "move" were added to existing backgammon glossaries (I'm not sure there is a backgammon wikipedia yet that has a glossary).
If there is another single, short word other than "move" that describes a play made by both players in a transcribed game (thereby measuring its length in traditional fashion), I'd like to know what it is. (I've heard "turn" suggested, but it seems that word is employed in both senses, too. See how Daniel uses it here, how Henrik uses it here, and how it is used in the Chess Wikipedia definition near the beginning of this post.) I sometimes wish "point" didn't have so many definitions.
Nack
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