furbster: That is what I was getting at - there is no point in hidding the points since if someone "really" wants to know how many point there is, they can sit there for 3 minutes and figure it out. When I play, I try to play and move on so hiding the score would only slow down game play.

Basicly it's how many spaces your pieces are attacking. So on the first move, if you put a rook in a corner space, you would have 14 points (for "attacking" 7 in each direction). If then the player places a piece right next to your rook, they would take away 7 points from you since you are no longer attacking in that direction.