Cribbage Rules

Cribbage is a simple two person card game. The game involves scoring points by playing and grouping cards into pairs. Flush (not including top card). Cribbage game is a fast-phased and fun, best played with two people. The card game play within a round can take a little bit of getting used to at first.If you're looking for a fast-paced card game.

Objective

The objective in Cribbage is to be the first player to get 121 points. The gameplay is divided into three distinct parts, The Deal, The Play and The Show. Each part is explained in detail below.

This version of Cribbage is for two players, there are many other variations possible, but these rules are only for the variation we've chosen for this site. There are a lot of rules, I've tried to explain them as best I can here, but you can also look at the rules at www.pagat.com or at Cribbage Corner, both of those are good places to learn how Cribbage works.

The Deal

The game starts with both players drawing a card from the deck to find out who is the dealer. The person that gets the lower card is the dealer. If the players draw equal cards then they draw again until the dealer can be determined. This way of determining the dealer is only done in the first round, in subsequent rounds who is the dealer will alternate between the two players.

The dealer deals 6 cards to himself and 6 cards to the opponent. Each player then chooses two cards from their hand to put face down into the crib. The crib belongs to the dealer and is used at the end of the round to gain extra points. Which cards you choose to put in the crib is very important, as it affects how many points you can get in later parts of the game.

At this point each player has four cards in their hand, and the Crib has four cards. The deck of cards is then put to the side, and the non-dealer (also called a pone) cuts the deck and then reveals the top card. This card is referred to as the starter or the cut. If the starter is a Jack then the dealer immediately scores 2 points. This is known as Two for his heels. Once the starter card has been shown, the players are ready to proceed to the next part of the game.

The Play

The pone (the player who is not the dealer) starts by laying down a card on the table and announcing its value, e.g. lays down a 6 and announces 'Six'. The dealer then lays down a card and announces the cumulative value of the cards on the table, e.g. he lays down a 5 and announces 'Eleven'. This continues with the players laying down one card each until a player cannot lay down another card without the cumulative value going over 31. The player then says 'Go' and the other player can then continue to lay down his cards until he also can't lay down a card without going over 31. He then says 'Go' as well, and the player who laid down the last card will score 1 point if the total value is under 31 but 2 points if the value on the table is exactly 31. They then reset the count to 0 and continue with their remaining cards, starting with the player who did not lay down the last card. An ace is counted as 1, face cards are counted as 10 and other cards are their normal value.

During this phase there are several ways to score points, based on how you lay down your cards. Points are scored as you lay down your cards, e.g. if your opponent has just laid down a 4 and then you lay down another 4 on top of it then you will score a pair. The starter/cut card is not used at all in this part of the game.

Players always announce the cumulative value of the cards on the table when they lay down a new card. If they score points they will announce the points as well, e.g. 15 for 2, or 31 for 2. When a player has said 'Go' then the other player will say '1 for the Go' when he's claiming the point from laying down the last card. He might also say '1 for last', if the other player has not laid down any cards since the value was last reset. 1 for the Go or 1 for last are just different ways of announcing the same thing, that the player gets 1 point because he laid down the last card under 31.

Scoring during The Play

• Fifteen: For adding a card that makes the total 15, score 2 points.
• Pair: For adding a card of the same rank as the card just played, score 2 points.
• Pair Royal (Three of a kind): For adding a card of the same rank as the last two cards, score 6.
• Double Pair Royal (Four of a kind): For adding a card of the same rank as the last 3 cards, score 12.
• Run (sequence) of three or more cards: Score 1 point for each card in the sequence. The cards do not need to be in order, but they do need to be all together. E.g. H2 C8 D6 H7 S5 is a 4 card sequence because C8 D6 H7 S5 can be re-arranged into S5 D6 H7 C8, but H2 C5 C7 D7 S6 is not a sequence because the extra 7 in the middle breaks up the sequence of 5-6-7. Basically if you can take n cards that are in order and re-arrange them so all the n cards form a numerical sequence then it's a sequence.
• Last card, total value less than 31: Score 1 point.
• Last card, total value exactly 31: Score 2 points.

It's worth noting that even though all face cards count as 10, you cannot create a pair, pair royal or double pair royal with cards unless they have the same 'real' rank. E.g. two queens are a pair, a queen and a king aren't, even though they are both valued at 10. For sequences an ace is always low, you can't make a sequence with a king and an ace next to each other.

It's also worth noting that you can make points in many ways with the same cards. E.g. if the cards on the table are DA C7 and you lay down H7 you will get 2 points because 1+7+7=15 and 2 points because 7+7 is a pair of sevens. So, in that case you would announce 'Fifteen for 4'.

This part of the game continues until both players have played all their cards. The scores are updated as soon as a player gets points, and if a player reaches the target score, 121, the game is finished immediately.

The Show

Once The Play is finished, the players take back their cards from the table and it's time to calculate the score for their hands, and the crib. These are always scored in the same order: pone's hand, dealer's hand, dealer's crib. As before, the scores are added to the scoreboard as soon as they are calculated, and if a player reaches 121 the game is over immediately, the other player doesn't get to count his score. This means that there's no chance of a tie, or both players going over 121 in the same round. The dealer will normally get more points since he scores both his hand and the crib, but the pone scores his hand first, so if they're both close to 121 the pone might win, even though the dealer would have gotten more points if he were allowed to count them.

The Show Scoring

The scoring for The Show is similar to the scoring for The Play, but with some important differences. The starter card is used here with both hands and the crib, so a hand is the hand + the starter, and the crib is the crib + the starter. You can use the same card for many different combinations, e.g. it can be part of a pair and also part of a sequence.

• One for his nob: For having the jack of the same suit as the starter, score 1 point. E.g. starter is H4, you have HJ.
• Fifteen: Any combination of cards that sum to 15. You can re-use cards, so if you have HJ, SJ and C5 you get 2 points for HJ C5 and another 2 points for SJ C5.
• Pair: For any pair of cards, e.g. SQ DQ, score 2 points.
• Pair Royal (Three of a kind): For any three cards of the same rank, e.g. S8 C8 H8, score 6 points.
• Double Pair Royal (Four of a kind): For any four cards of the same rank, e.g. HA SA DA CA, score 12 points.
• Run (sequence) of three or more cards: Score 1 point for each card in the sequence. E.g. for SA H2 C3 D4, score 4 points.
• Flush, 4 cards: If all the cards in your hand are of the same suit, e.g. SA S5 S9 SJ, score 4 points. These four cards all have to be in your hand, you cannot have three cards in your hand + the starter count as a flush. A 4 card flush also can't be used for the crib, only for your hand.
• Flush, 5 cards: If all the cards in your hand, and the starter card, are of the same suit, e.g. SA S5 S9 SJ SQ, score 5 points. You can also get a 5 card flush for your crib, if all the cards in the crib and the starter are of the same suit.

Skunks and Double Skunks

A skunk is when a player wins by over 30 points, his opponent has less than 91 points when the game is over. A double skunk is when a player wins by over 60 points, the opponent has less than 61 points. Normally a skunk will count as two games and a double skunk as 3. However, on this site we're not playing multiple games, we only track each game individually. We will however show you an image of a skunk or two if you get a skunk, and we do keep track of skunk counts for the statistics page.

Variations

As with every game, there are slight variations in how people play Cribbage. I've tried to look at many sources and pick the most 'standard' rules I could. Some common variations is that the next-to-last hole on the scoreboard is the 'stinkhole' and not all points count there. I'm not using that variation on this site, you can score wherever you are. There are undoubtedly other variations that people like and would like to see here, if a lot of people request a specific variation I would consider adding it, but I don't want to start adding different options for the game, I like picking one way to play a game and sticking with it.

Cribbage, or crib, is a card game traditionally for two players, but commonly played with three, four or more, that involves playing and grouping cards in combinations which gain points.

Cribbage has several distinctive features: the cribbage board used for score-keeping, the eponymouscrib, box, or kitty (in parts of Canada)—a separate hand counting for the dealer—two distinct scoring stages (the play and the show) and a unique scoring system including points for groups of cards that total fifteen. It has been characterized as 'Britain's national card game' and the only one legally playable on licensed premises (pubs and clubs) without requiring local authority permission.^[1]

The game has relatively few rules yet yields endless subtleties during play. Tactical play varies, depending on which cards one's opponent has played, how many cards in the remaining deck will help the hand one holds, and what one's position on the board is. A game may be decided by only a few points—or even a single point—and the edge often goes to an experienced player who utilizes strategy, including calculating odds and making decisions based on the relative positions of players on the board.

Both cribbage and its close relative Costly Colours are descended from the old English card game of noddy. Cribbage added the distinctive feature of a crib and changed the scoring system for points, whereas Costly Colours added more combinations but retained the original noddy scoring scheme.

History[edit]

According to John Aubrey, cribbage was created by the English poet Sir John Suckling in the early 17th century, as a derivation of the game 'noddy'. While noddy has become a historical, rarely-played game,^[2] cribbage has continued unchanged as a popular game in the English-speaking world.^[3] The objective of the game is to be the first player to score a target number of points, typically 61 or 121. Points are scored for showing certain jacks, playing the last card, for card combinations adding up to 15 or 31, and for pairs, triples, quadruples (cards of the same rank), runs (sequences of consecutive numbers irrespective of suit) and flushes (sets of cards of the same suit).^[4]

Cribbage was played by American submariners,^[5] serving as a common pastime. The wardroom of the oldest active submarine in the United States Pacific Fleet carries on board the personal cribbage board of World War II submarine commander and Medal of Honor recipient, Rear Admiral Dick O'Kane, and upon the boat's decommissioning, the board is transferred to the next oldest boat.^[6]

Rules[edit]

Play proceeds through a succession of 'hands', each hand consisting of a 'deal', 'the play' and 'the show'. At any time during any of these stages, if a player reaches the target score (usually 121), play ends immediately with that player being the winner of the game. This can even happen during the deal, since the dealer scores if a jack is cut as the starter.

Deal[edit]

The players cut for first deal, and the person who cuts the lowest card deals. The dealer shuffles and deals five or six cards to each player, depending on the number of players. For two players, each is dealt six cards; for three or four players, each is dealt five cards. In the case of three players, a single card is dealt face down in the centre of the table to start the crib. Once the cards have been dealt, each player chooses four cards to retain, then discards the other one or two face-down to form the 'crib' (also called the box), which will be used later by the dealer.^[7]

At this point, each player's hand and the crib will contain exactly four cards. The player on the dealer's left cuts the remaining deck, and the dealer reveals the top card, called the 'starter' or the 'cut'.^[8] If this card is a jack, the dealer scores two points for 'his heels' or 'his nibs'.

Play[edit]

Starting with the player on the dealer's left, the players each in turn lay one card face up on the table in front of them, stating the count—that is, the cumulative value of the cards that have been laid (for example, the first player lays a five and says 'five', the next lays a six and says 'eleven', and so on)—without the count going above 31. Face cards (kings, queens, and jacks) count as 10. The cards are not laid in the centre of the table as, at the end of the 'play', each player needs to pick up the cards they have laid.

Players score points during the play as follows:

• 15 – For causing the count to reach exactly 15 a player scores two points, then play continues.
• Pair – Completing a pair (two of a kind) scores two points.
  • Three of a kind is the same as three different pairs, or 6 points.
  • Four of a kind is 6 different pairs, or 12 points.
• A run of three or more cards (consecutively played, but not necessarily in order) scores the number of cards in the run.

If a player cannot play without causing the count to exceed 31, they call 'Go'. Continuing with the player on their left, the other player(s) continue(s) the play until no one can play without the count exceeding 31. A player is obliged to play a card unless there is no card in their hand that can be played without the count exceeding 31 (one cannot voluntarily pass). Once 31 is reached or no one is able to play, the player who played the last card scores one point if the count is still under 31 and two if it is exactly 31. The count is then reset to zero and those players with cards remaining in their hands repeat the process starting with the player to the left of the player who played the last card. When all players have played all of their cards the game proceeds to the 'show'.

Players choose the order in which to lay their cards in order to maximize their scores; experienced players refer to this as either good or poor 'pegging' or 'pegsmanship'. If one player reaches the target (usually 61 or 121), the game ends immediately and that player wins. When the scores are level during a game, the players' pegs will be side by side, and it is thought that this gave rise to the phrase 'level pegging'.^[9]

Show[edit]

Once the play is complete, each player in turn, starting with the player on the left of the dealer, displays their own hand on the table and scores points based on its content in conjunction with the starter card. Points are scored for:

• Combinations of any number of cards totalling fifteen
• Runs
• Pairs (Multiple pairs are scored pair by pair but may be referred to as three or four of a kind.)
• Flush (A four-card flush scores four and cannot include the starter card; a five-card flush scores five.)
• Having a jack of the same suit as the starter card ('one for his nob [or nobs or nibs]', sometimes called the 'right' jack)

The dealer scores their hand last and then turns the cards in the crib face up. These cards are then scored by the dealer as an additional hand, also in conjunction with the starter card. Unlike the dealer's own hand, the crib cannot score a four-card flush, but it can score a five-card flush with the starter.

All scores from 0 to 29 are possible, with the exception of 19, 25, 26 and 27.^[10] Players may refer colloquially to a hand scoring zero points as a “nineteen hand”.^[11]

Muggins[edit]

Muggins (also known as cut-throat) is a commonly used but optional rule, which must be announced before game play begins. If a player fails to claim their full score on any turn, the opponent may call out 'Muggins' and peg any points overlooked by the player.^[12]

Match[edit]

A match (much like tennis) consists of more than one game, often an odd number. The match points are scored on the cribbage board using the holes reserved for match points. On a spiral board, these are often at the bottom of the board in a line with 5 or 7 holes. On a conventional board, they are often in the middle of the board or at the top or bottom.

In a two-player game of cribbage, a player scores one match point for winning a game. Their opponent will start as dealer in the next game. If a player lurches (British) or skunks (US) their opponent (reaches 121 points before their opponent scores 91 points), that player wins two match points for that game. If a player double skunks their opponent (reaches 121 points before their opponent reaches 61), they score three or four match points for the game, depending on local convention.^[13] If a player triple skunks their opponent (reaches 121 points before their opponent reaches 31 points), they automatically win the match. Double and triple skunks are not included in the official rules of cribbage play and are optional. There are several different formats for scoring match points.

Cribbage board[edit]

Visually, cribbage is known for its scoring board—a series of holes ('streets') on which the score is tallied with pegs (also known as 'spilikins').^[14] Scores can be kept on a piece of paper, but a cribbage board is almost always used, since scoring occurs throughout the game, not just at the conclusion of hands as in most other card games.

Points are registered as having been scored by 'pegging' along the crib board. Two pegs are used in a leapfrog fashion, so that if a player loses track during the count one peg still marks the previous score. Some boards have a 'game counter' with many additional holes for use with a third peg to count the games won by each side.

There are several designs of crib board:

• The classic design is a flat wooden board approximately 250–300 mm (10–12 in) by 70–80 mm (3–4 in) and 10–20 mm (0.4–0.8 in) deep. There are two sets of 60 holes (30 'out' and 30 'back') divided into 5 point sections. A pegging-out hole in the middle at each end allows the board to be used in either direction. One player or team scores on one set of 60 holes and the other player or team scores on the second set. Different arrangements are made for three player games.
• A relatively old design is that of an equilateral triangle with two rows of forty holes on each side. These boards did not generally include extra pegging-out holes or holes to count games.
• A newer design has three or four rows of 120 holes in a 'paperclip' shape (with a pegging-out hole at the end) and is often brightly coloured. It is best suited to games played to 121, though it can also be used for 61-point games.
• A tournament long board is used in sanctioned tournaments in the American Cribbage Congress and consists of four rows of 60 pegs (two rows for each player), no number markings or five point segments, and only a mark indicating the skunk line. Movement around the board starts on the outside and ends on the inside. Players start and end in the same hole.
• Another common variation is based on features of the highest-scoring cribbage hand. The board takes the form of the number 29 (the highest possible score), with the pegging rows following the contour of the numbers '2' and '9'. The design can sometimes include a background image of three fives and a jack, with the fourth five offset—the 'perfect hand' giving that score. The count being 8 combinations of 15 for 16 points, 6 pairs of 2 for 12 points and a matching 'nobs' jack (matching the cut card) for 1 totalling 29.

Each of the four 30-point divisions of the cribbage board (1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 91–120) is colloquially called a 'street'. Being at 15 points would be on first street, being at 59 points would be on second street, etc.

What Is A 4 Card Flush In Cribbage

Noddy and costly colours[edit]

What Is A Flush Worth In Cribbage

The ancestor of cribbage is noddy, a game for two or four players, each receiving just three cards and playing and scoring in a similar manner to modern cribbage. However, instead of scoring 2 points for reaching 15 or 31 (called hitter), players scored the number of constituent cards making up the point. In addition, there was originally a third point at 25. Players also scored for pairs, prials, runs and flushes as in cribbage. There was no crib and game was 31.

Costly colours may have developed separately from noddy, as it retains several original features that are no longer part of cribbage. Again, only three cards are dealt, there is no crib and it uses the same scoring scheme for points at 15, 25 and 31 or hitter. What is new is that deuces play a similar role to jacks and that players may score for colours—i.e., having three or four cards of the same suit or colour. Four cards of the same suit are costly colours, hence the name.

See also[edit]

• Cribbage Solitaire and Cribbage Square Solitaire, two solitaire card games based on Cribbage
• Hounds and Jackals, an Ancient Egyptian game, which uses a similar board
• Kings Cribbage, a game with cribbage hands being constructed crossword-style
• American Cribbage Congress, sanctioning body for cribbage clubs and tournaments in the US

References[edit]

1. ^Parlett, David. The Penguin Book of Card Games. London: Penguin (2008), p. 423. ISBN978-0-141-03787-5
2. ^Cash, Cassidy (12 January 2019). 'Experience Shakespeare: How to Play Noddy, a 16th Century Card Game'. youtube. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
3. ^Aubrey, John (1898). Andrew Clark (ed.). Brief Lives chiefly of Contemporaries set down John Aubrey between the Years 1669 and 1696, Volume II. Clarendon Press. p. 245.
4. ^'American Cribbage Congress Website'. www.cribbage.org. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
5. ^Klemenc, Stacey Enesey. 'Cribbage: It's not just a game, it's an obsession'. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
6. ^'The O'Kane Cribbage Board Is Passed Down'. US Department of Defense. 8 November 2019. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
7. ^Parlett, David (October 1987). The Penguin Book of Card Games. Treasure Press. ISBN1-85051-221-3.
8. ^'The Mechanics of Playing Cribbage'. The American Cribbage Congress. 2004-10-01. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
9. ^Oxford Dictionaries, OxfordWords blog http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/11/popular-idioms-explained/ extracted 31 Oct 2014
10. ^Steven S. Lumetta (2007-05-15). 'Amusing Cribbage Facts'. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
11. ^Cribbage Corner (2008-05-05). 'The nineteen hand at cribbage'. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
12. ^'Rule 10. Muggins'.
13. ^Cribbage Corner. 'Cribbage rules – winning the game'. Retrieved 2015-02-23.
14. ^'Spilikin'. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. Retrieved 2008-03-08. One of a number of small pieces or pegs of wood, ivory, bone, or other material, for playing a game, or for counting the score in a game, as in cribbage.

What Is A Straight Flush In Cribbage

Further reading[edit]

• Scarne, John (1965). Scarne on Card Games. Dover Publications. pp. 395–404. ISBN0-486-43603-9.
• Wergin, Joe (1980). Win at Cribbage. Oldcastle Books. ISBN0-948353-97-X.

What Is A Flush In Cribbage Table

External links[edit]