Play Cribbage

Cribbage Pro is available on both Android and iOS devices like the iPhone, iPod or iPad. Not only can you play the same great computer opponents from Easy all the way to Advanced, but you can also play against some of the best in the mobile community in our online multiplayer over the Internet. Traditional Cribbage is a card game that has been around since the 17th Century. It involves creating hands composed of pairs, runs, flushes, and sums to 15. Here at eCribbage.com, you can play 2 player, 3 player, and 4 player games.

Cribbage Rules

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

see also:
Cribbage Rules - How to Play Cribbage
Cribbage Strategy - Play Cribbage better
Cribbage Internet Tournaments
Cribbage 29 hand and some Cribbage statistics
Cribbage pone pegging score
Cribbage dealer pegging score
Cribbage scoring chart
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Intro
Though in online cribbage you don't need to score manually the counting your cribbage hand correctly is a very important part of the game of Cribbage. Moreover, you can select the 'Manual' option or play non-online cribbage with Muggins variation. Muggins is when a person misses points and the other person takes them. To simplify calculation, order your cribbage hand left to right from low cards to high. Of course, in online cribbage it is done already.
In explanation below we use card notation of all our card games, 'Suit Value', DJ means Jack of Diamonds, S0 means 10 of Spades etc.

The Scoring points
Let's recall cribbage scoring, rules and the the combinations that give points:
15: Any combination of cards adding up to 15 pips scores 2 points. For example king, jack, five, five would count 8 points (four fifteens as the king and the jack can each be paired with either five). This combination would be marked as fifteen: 8.
Pair: A pair of cards of the same rank score 2 points. Three cards of the same rank contain 3 different pairs and thus score a total of 6 points for pair royal. Four of a kind contain 6 pairs and so score 12 points.
Run: Three cards of consecutive rank (irrespective of suit), such as ace-2-3, score 3 points for a run. A hand such as 6-7-7-8 contains two runs of 3 (as well as two fifteens and a pair) and so would score 12 altogether. A run of four cards, such as 9-10-J-Q scores 4 points (this is slightly illogical - you might expect it to score 6 because it contains two runs of 3, but it doesn't. The runs of 3 within it don't count - you just get 4), and a run of five cards scores 5.
Flush: If all four cards of the hand are the same suit, 4 points are scored for flush. If the start card is the same suit as well, the flush is worth 5 points. There is no score for having 3 hand cards and the start all the same suit. Note also that there is no score for flush during the play - it only counts in the show.
One For His Nob: If the hand contains the jack of the same suit as the start card, you peg One for his nob.

Cribbage hand scoring order
In general the best approach is to count your 15's, then pairs, then runs, then Nobs, then finally flushes. The same approach we use on checking your hands on our servers and gaming program.

Counting 15s in hand
It is a good idea to remember 3 typical pairs, that give you 15 in total
i.e. 7+8, 6+9, 5+10
If you do not see the above template pairs, but have at least one card from such pairs, you can try to find 3-card combinations to complete the sum to 15 with using the same pattern. For example
See, we have one card from the above pairs and form the other card as a sum of 2 cards (D3+S4 will give 7). To go futher we can extend this method to 4 and 5 cards. If you cannot find 7s, 8s, or 9s or Try to sum any 2 cards to get
Repeat your search not to omit any combination. Start from the bigger value cards and try to gather 15 to it. For example:
HQ and DA+S4, D8 and DA+C2+S4
Some cribbage hands cause confusion for people who forget about the low cards in the hand - they can be added to other cards in hand to form the 'seed' 7s, 8s, or 9s. Example:
S8 and H7, S8 and C6+DA, S8 and C6+CA, and the last one - H7 and C6+DA+CA will give you 8 points on 15s. As for this example, there is also a pair of Aces (2 points) and a run 6,7,8 (3 points) - total 13.
The next confusing cribbage hand type for 15s counting is a hand contaning many pairs. For example
We see, that here we can form pattern '7+8'. Just start from every high value card and search for all the others. C8 and C6+DA, C8 and H6+DA, S8 and C6+DA, S8 and H6+DA, 8 points for 15s (and 4 for two pairs). So each card pair simply doubles the initial combination 8,6,A. You will see the same rule later in runs counting.

Counting pairs in hand
It's quite simple, just not to forget to count a pair in your hand after difficult 15s scoring. Remember, that all cards above 10 (J,Q,K) have the same value 10 in cribbage and result a pair in any combination. Also, the royal pair (3 cards of the same rank) can be imagined as 3 simple pairs and thus give the score of 3 pairs, i.e. 2 * 3 = 6 points. The same is for Four of a kind - (4 cards of the same rank) - it is 6 simple pairs, that gives you 2 * 6 = 12 points.

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Scoring runs in hand
There is a simple rule for runs in cribbage - how many cards run has - the same number of points you gets. So that single run counting is easy. Some more complicated run is a double run - sometimes people just learning the game don't really understand how a double run works. The idea is that you can count each completely different set of cards that be combined for a run.
2,3,4 is a run, but you have here H2 and C2, so that, each of them gives you a separate run of 3 cards. You can remember here our rule that each pair in the combination doubles its score points. Run H2,S3,D4 gives 3 points, run C2, S3, D4 gives another 3 points. To use this hand completely let's recount it, first 15s: S9 and D4+H2, S9 and D4+C2 (9-6 pattern) - 4 points for 15s. A pair H2C2 - 2 points, 6+4+2 = 12 points in your hand. Remember, that such a double-run with the lenght of 3 cards gives 8 points automatically - 6 for runs and 2 for the pair
A double-double run (always involves all 5 cards in hand - 4 plus a starter card) itself is worth 16 points, you get 4 times of 3 points = 12 for the runs and 4 for two pairs
After detecting a double-double run you should concentrate on 15s, having in mind, that 16 points is a standard sum for the double-double run total. In the above example we also have 2 extra points for 15s - sum all the cards in your hand (7+8 pattern).

Scoring flushes
Flushes can give 4 or 5 points - again, on the number of cards in it. 4 points for all four cards in your hand of the same suit and 5 points, if a starter card has the same suit. If you have only 3 cards in your hand of one suit and a starter card of the same suit it will NOT be a flush. Example:
It would be a co-called bust hand, but we have one suit for all the cards, so it worth 5 poitns.

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Scoring Nobs
Pay attention to Jacks in your hand, one of them can give you one extra point if the starter card has the same suit. Let's modify the previous example a little:
Here we do not have flush now, but with the Hearts suit of the starter HA and a Jack of Hearts in our hand give us 1 point.

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