Endgame
Etymology
A chess term for the phase after most pieces are traded off, where kings and pawns decide the result. Samuel Beckett borrowed it for the title of his 1957 play "Endgame," and it spread into strategy, business, and geopolitics. To ask "what’s the endgame?" is to ask how a plan is meant to finish.
noun · /END-gaym/
The final phase of a contest or plan, when few pieces remain and every move is decisive.
What it names
The stage where the outcome is being sealed and technique matters more than possibility — the closing, not the opening.
Example
The startup’s endgame was never profit but acquisition by a larger rival.
Related idea
The endgame is the closing phase, while a gambit is the opening one — both borrowed from the same board.