Cribbagegames in One Page by Steve Lewis

CribbageGames In One Page by Steve Lewis

Attributed to Sir John Suckling, c. 1630 v1.0 pub2/8/18

In Cribbage, you want to carefully discard cards to keep a hand that scores points in various combinations of cards. Your hand is also pitted against the other players’ in a round where you earn more points by hitting target sums or by blocking others from being able to play. At the end of each round, each hand is scored, and the dealer also scores the points from the “crib”, the hand made from the discarded cards.

In a two-player game, each player is dealt six cards. Each player chooses two cards to discard face-down to the “crib” (a total of four cards), which the dealer sets aside. The player to the dealer’s left cuts the deck, and the dealer reveals the top card (the “starter”); if it is a Jack, the dealer scores two points.

The player to the dealer’s left plays one card from their hand, announcing its value. (Aces are worth 1, and face cards are worth 10.) Continuing clockwise, each player must play a card from their hand (if able), announcing the sum of the cards played, without exceeding a sum of 31. If a player has no cards to play, or can’t play without exceeding 31, they declare “Go,” and they are passed. If a player reaches the exact sum of 31 points, they earn 2 points. If the sum is less than 31 but no one can play, the last player to play earns 1 point. In either case, all players turn their played cards over, and play continues (resetting the count to zero) with the player to the left of the last player to play. The last player to play a card scores 1 point. Points may also be scored in the following ways:

If a player reaches a sum of exactly 15, they earn 2 points.
If a player plays the same card as the previous player, they earn 2 points. Similarly, if a player plays a third of the same card, they earn 6 points; a fourth of the same card is worth 12 points.
If a player plays the third of a run of three consecutively valued cards (regardless of their order, e.g. 7-9-8), they earn 3 points. Similarly, a player can earn 4 points if their card finishes a run of four cards, and so on.

Then, starting with the player on the dealer’s left, each player reveals their hand, and scores points for combinations that can be formed with their hand in conjunction with the starter card. The same cards can be used in multiple combinations. The combinations are:

2 points for each combination of two or more cards that add up to exactly 15 (Again, aces count as 1 and face cards count as 10)
X points for each run of X consecutive cards
4 points if the four cards in your hand are all the same suit, or 5 if the starter card is also the same suit
1 point for having a Jack with the same suit as the starter card

After all players score their hands, the dealer reveals the crib, and scores the points for the cards put in the crib. Then, the role of dealer passes to the left, and a new round begins. As soon as a player reaches 121 points (during any phase of the game), the game is immediately over and that player wins.

In a three-player game, each player is dealt five cards, and one card is dealt directly to the crib. Each player discards one card to the crib. In a four-player game, each player is dealt five cards, and each player discards one card to the crib; alternating players are partners, and score together. Games with five or six players are possible, but dealing and scoring get weird.

Scoring is most often recorded on a cribbage board, featuring tracks of holes into which pegs are moved in a leapfrog fashion (when a player scores, their back peg moves ahead of their front peg the appropriate number of points). Scoring on paper or by other means is possible, but recording a bunch of 1- and 2-point movies during the playing phase can become tedious. In a common but more cutthroat variation, players can steal any unclaimed points their opponents miss during their scoring phase.

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