Cribbage

Cribbage: the card game with its own piece of furniture

No other card game is so identified with its scoring apparatus. The wooden board with its rows of 121 holes exists because cribbage scores constantly — not once at the end of a hand, but the instant anything worth points happens: a fifteen mid-play, a pair in your hand, a Jack cut at the right moment. Pegging as you go isn't bookkeeping; it's the game's whole nervous system, and it produces cribbage's signature drama — a game can end in the middle of counting a hand, with points still sitting on the table that will never be scored. Add the crib — a second hand the dealer builds out of everyone's discards — and you get a game where every deal opens with a small, loaded decision about how much to arm your opponent.

It is the odd one out on this site in a specific way: every other game here waits until a trick, a hand or a round is finished before anybody scores. Cribbage never waits. Points land mid-sentence, the target is a physical distance rather than a number in your head, and a game can genuinely finish while somebody is halfway through counting a hand.

Where it comes from

Cribbage has an unusually specific origin story for a card game: it's credited to Sir John Suckling, an English poet, gambler, and courtier of the early 1600s, who adapted it from an older game called Noddy. (Suckling's other claim to fame is allegedly funding his lifestyle by mailing marked decks to country houses across England, then visiting to play cards — take the attribution with the appropriate grain of salt.) The game crossed to America early and put down deep roots: it became a fixture of New England taverns and, famously, of the US Navy, where submariners have played it for generations — the oldest active board in the fleet is traditionally passed to the oldest submarine in service. Nearly four centuries on, the rules Suckling's contemporaries would recognize are almost exactly the ones on this page.

The objective

Be the first to 121 points. Points come from three places every hand: pegging during play, counting your hand in the show, and — if you dealt — counting the crib. The race ends the instant either player's total touches 121, no matter what was left uncounted.

Setup: six cards and a hard choice

1. Each player is dealt six cards. The deal alternates every hand.
2. Both players choose two cards to discard face down to the crib— a third, four-card hand that belongs to the dealer and is scored by the dealer after the show. This is the game's central tension: as non-dealer (the pone), every card you toss might come back to bite you; as dealer, your discards are an investment in your own second hand.
3. The pone cuts the deck and the dealer turns up the top card — the starter. It belongs to no one during play, but counts as a fifth card in every hand and the crib at show time. If the starter is a Jack — "his heels" — the dealer immediately pegs 2.

Card values

For counting purposes, aces are 1, court cards are 10, and everything else is its face value. Rank still matters separately: a Queen pairs only a Queen, and runs follow the true order A-2-3 … J-Q-K (aces are always low — Q-K-A is not a run).

The Jack leads a double life, which catches people out. For counting it's just another ten-card, worth exactly what a King is worth. Its extra points come from being a specific card rather than a value: cut as the starter it pegs the dealer 2 (his heels), and held in a hand matching the starter's suit it scores 1 (his nobs). Those are the only two places the game cares which court card it is.

The play: pegging to 31

Starting with the pone, players alternate laying cards face up, announcing the running total, which may never exceed 31. You score immediately for what your card does to the pile:

• Fifteen — bringing the count to exactly 15 pegs 2.
• Pair — matching the previous card's rank pegs 2. A third of the same rank is a pair royal for 6, and a fourth is a double pair royal for 12.
• Run — if the last three or more cards form a run in any order (7, 5, 6 counts), peg one point per card. Runs can stretch play by play: after 4-5-6-7, the run of 4 pegs 4 for whoever played the 7.
• Thirty-one — hitting 31 exactly pegs 2 and resets the count.

If you can't play without passing 31, you say "go" (this table announces it for you) and your opponent keeps playing as long as they legally can, then pegs 1 for the go — or 2 if they land on 31 exactly. The count resets to zero and the player who didn't play the last card leads the new count. When all eight cards are down, whoever played the very last card pegs 1 for last card (unless it made 31, which already paid 2).

The show: counting hands in strict order

Now each four-card hand is counted with the starter as a communal fifth card — and the order is a rule with teeth: pone first, then the dealer's hand, then the crib. Near the finish line this ordering decides games: a pone sitting on 117 with a scrappy 4-point hand beats a dealer holding 20 points of gorgeous cards they never get to count. Each hand scores:

• Fifteens — every distinct combination of cards totalling exactly 15 scores 2. A hand of 5-5-J-K with a 10 starter has six of them.
• Pairs — 2 per pair, counted combinatorially: three of a kind is three pairs (6), four of a kind is six pairs (12).
• Runs — three or more consecutive ranks score one per card, and duplicates multiply: 4-4-5-6 is a double run — two runs of three plus a pair, 10 points before any fifteens.
• Flush — four hand cards of one suit score 4, five with the starter score 5. The crib is stricter: only a five-card flush counts there.
• His nobs — holding the Jack of the starter's suit scores 1.

Counting is additive and shameless: the same card works in a fifteen, a pair, and a run simultaneously. This table itemises every count in the show so you can check the arithmetic yourself.

The board and the pegs

Each player pegs with two pegs, leapfrogging: the front peg marks your score, and each new score jumps the back peg past the front. On this page the board is drawn as two lanes under the scoreboard — the solid peg is your total, the hollow one shows where you last jumped from, and the small white line marks the skunk threshold. On a physical board you'd travel the holes "up the outside, down the inside"; the arithmetic is identical.

Scoring reference

The same combinations are worth the same during play and in the show, with three exceptions marked below — which is why the game is quick to learn and slow to count accurately.

Strategy that actually matters

• The crib decides your discard, not your hand. The same six cards split differently depending on who's dealing. To your own crib, toss fifteens-in-waiting: a pair, touching cards, or best of all a 5. To your opponent's crib, toss trash — wide-spaced cards like a King and a 9 — and never, ever donate a 5: with sixteen ten-value cards in the deck, a 5 in a crib is nearly always worth points.
• Keep cards that work together twice. A run like 6-7-8 isn't just three run points — 7+8 is a fifteen, and any 6, 7, 8, or 9 starter multiplies the whole structure. Connected middle cards routinely out-earn a hand of pretty face cards, which combine with almost nothing.
• Lead a 4 or lower. The opening lead can't give up a fifteen — no reply to a 4-or-under lead reaches 15. Leading from a pair is even better: if the opponent pairs you for 2, your pair royal answers for 6.
• Never answer to 21, rarely to 5. Ten-cards are a third of the deck, so leaving the count at 21 (or letting a 5 land early) invites an easy 31 or 15. The bot on this page knows this; make it work for its points.
• Play the endgame by position, not by points. Once either player is within a hand of 121, the counting order becomes the whole game. As pone you count first, so a modest hand that pegs you out beats a beautiful one; as dealer, you may need to peg aggressively during play because your hand might never be counted. Experienced players even keep worse hands near the end if they peg more safely.
• Count your hand before you discard. A quick habit: tally the keep's guaranteed points, then ask what starters improve it. Keeping 5-10-J-Q guarantees fifteens and threatens a run; sixteen ten-cards and four 5s all improve it further. Guaranteed points plus many helpful cuts beats a speculative keep every time.

Common variations

Four centuries of play have produced a deep drawer of house rules:

• Muggins — the classic cutthroat rule: if you undercount your own hand, your opponent may call "muggins!" and peg the points you missed. This table counts every hand for you, so muggins never triggers — but know the rule before playing strangers for money.
• Five-card cribbage — the original 17th-century game: five cards dealt, two to the crib, played to 61 with the pone pegging 3 at the start as compensation. The six-card game displaced it in the 1800s.
• Three- and four-hand cribbage — three players discard one card each (the dealer's cut supplies the crib's fourth), or four players in partnerships. Both are played to the same 121.
• Lowball — a common casual reversal: first to 121 loses. Strategy inverts entertainingly; deliberately scoring nothing is harder than it sounds.
• Skunk stakes — in match or money play, a skunk (loser under 91) counts as a double win and a double skunk (under 61) as triple or quadruple, by local custom.