Cribbage: A Strategy Guide for Beginners

By Jake Magnum

For those who have never played a single hand of cribbage or for those who have some experience playing the game, but who have limited knowledge of its strategic concepts, "Cribbage: A Strategy Guide for Beginners" is a perfect first cribbage book to read. This guide fully explains the rules of the game so that they can be understood by complete beginners. This guide also thoroughly discusses various cribbage concepts, from the most basic and easy-to-grasp tips to complex strategies that will improve the skills of many players, even those who have years of experience.

After reading this book, you will know how to:

- Deal a hand and play the pegging round.
- Count hands quickly and accurately.
- Use simple hand-selection strategies.
- Select the optimal hand based on its average net score after the cut.
- Select a good pegging hand.
- Determine when you should use a high-risk / high-reward hand-selection strategy.
- Manipulate the crib with your hand-selection decisions.
- Avoid costly pegging mistakes.
- Play a defensive pegging strategy.
- Set up counter-moves during the pegging round.
- Alter your pegging strategy when the count is high.
- Calculate the optimal pegging play for any given situation.
- Realize when it is correct to make a sub-optimal pegging play
- Read the opponent's hand and re-assess the optimal pegging play based on your read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jake Magnum
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370066063

Book preview

Cribbage: A Strategy Guide for Beginners

By Jake Magnum

Copyright 2016 Jake Magnum

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

How to Play

PART ONE: BASIC STRATEGY

Basic Hand-Selection Strategy

Basic Pegging Strategy

PART TWO: ADVANCED STRATEGY

Introduction

Making Optimal Hand-Selection Decisions

When It Is Correct to Keep a Sub-Optimal Hand

Advanced Pegging Strategy

Hand-Reading

PART THREE: EXAMPLES

Introduction

Hand-Selection (Your Crib)

Hand-Selection (Opponent’s Crib)

Pegging

About the Author

Introduction

Cribbage is a card game which has been played since as early as the 1600’s, and, today, is one of the most-enjoyed card games in the world. I believe that two aspects of cribbage are responsible for its durability and popularity. Firstly, there is an incredibly large number of six-card hands a player can be dealt – 20,358,520, to be exact. This means each game is unique, and so you must think about every hand you play instead of relying on rote strategies which would make the game feel repetitive. Secondly, the game of cribbage involves adequate amounts of skill and luck. In a game that is all skill and no luck, such as chess, the better player will virtually always win when there is a large gap in competence between opponents, and this reduces the fun that can be had by the players. Playing a game that is all luck and no skill is also not much fun (unless money is being wagered). Imagine playing a slot machine without betting any money – it would get boring rather quickly. Cribbage involves enough luck that a relatively poor player can win against a relatively good player if the poor player is dealt good cards. There is also enough skill involved that an experienced player will enjoy winning an appreciable majority of games over a weaker player.

About this Guide

If you are reading this, it is most likely because you want to learn how to play the game of cribbage or perhaps you know how to play but you don't win very often and would like to change that. Or perhaps you are like me and have an innate fondness for card games and card game strategies, and you want to add cribbage to the list of games at which you are skilled. Cribbage: A Strategy Guide for Beginners endeavors to help you accomplish these goals. This guide can be used by someone who has never played a hand of crib in his or her life or by players who have several years of experience but who consider themselves to be only pretty good rather than very good.

A complete beginner will find the How to Play section useful, as it thoroughly explains everything you need to know to get started playing crib. If you have been putting off playing crib because you fear you will embarrass yourself if you can't count your hand properly and quickly or if you will get confused during the pegging round, reading this section will be very helpful. The Basic Strategy chapters outline several core strategic concepts that will drastically improve a beginner's abilities. Most of these strategies are straightforward and can be learned by anyone. The Advanced Strategy chapters include information that is more challenging, but that can still be learned by players who do not have a lot of experience. At the end of this guide there is an Examples section which will test your understanding of what you have read – also, some example-specific gems will be found in the discussions of the examples.

This guide is by no means exhaustive. There are many intricate and rigorous cribbage concepts which are not included in this guide – such concepts are for very serious expert players and are covered in other cribbage books. This book will get you from being a complete beginner to being a solid intermediate player who will do very well at cribbage in a casual setting; if you are looking to become a top contender in serious cribbage tournaments, further reading will be required, though this guide is a great starting point. Many of the strategies discussed in this guide are used by expert players.

I wrote this guide because there seems to be a gap in available cribbage knowledge. You can search Google for cribbage strategy and find some free tips, but they are not expounded to the extent they would be in a professionally-written book. On the other end of the spectrum are advanced cribbage books which discuss many concepts that are too complicated for beginners and might alienate them from the game – these books also tend to be expensive, going for over $20. With Cribbage: A Strategy Guide for Beginners, I have offered novice players well-written, carefully explained, and easy-to-understand cribbage lessons. I have priced this book much lower than the average cribbage book because my goal in producing this work is not to make a lot of money, but to get people interested in cribbage and to help them extract as much enjoyment as they can from the game.

Notation Used in this Guide

Before we begin, there is some short-hand used throughout this guide which needs to be clarified quickly:

When the term face card is used, it refers to any ten, jack, queen, or king. Normally, when discussing playing cards, only jacks or higher are referred to as face cards (the cards that have faces on them – makes sense!). However, since tens have the same value as jacks or higher in crib, tens are lumped together throughout this guide, for simplicity's sake, with jacks, queens, and kings.

Sometimes, aces, jacks, queens, and kings are abbreviated with an A, J, Q, or K, respectively.

In the discussions of examples, hands are commonly written without suit indicators – as [2 2 6 7], for example. This is done when suits are irrelevant.

For pegging examples, hands are written in the form of [3 4 5 Q] [J], for instance. The card within its own set of brackets is the cut.

For analyses of hand-selection examples, hands are written in the form of [3 4 5 6] [Q K]. The set of brackets containing four cards represents your hand and the set of brackets containing two cards represents your two discards.

How to Play

Many people are intimidated by the rules of cribbage – the hand-counting scheme, pegging procedure and other aspects of the game can be quite baffling to the prospective player. It is true that cribbage is relatively complicated as far as card games go, but it does not require any extraordinary skill or mathematical prowess to play. Thus, anyone can learn to play crib. If you have very little or no knowledge of cribbage, this chapter will teach you everything you need to know to play the game.

Object of the Game

The goal of a crib game is to be the first player to reach 121 points. Points are made by holding hands that contain pairs or three- or four-of-a-kind, runs of three or more consecutive cards, combinations of cards that add to fifteen, and more (full details are given in the Counting Hands section of this chapter). Points are also made in the same way in the pegging component of a hand (the Pegging section of this chapter will give a thorough discussion).

Starting a Game

Firstly, each player places two pegs into two of the starting holes of the playing board. When you score points, move your back peg the designated number of points ahead of your front peg. To start a game, each player cuts a card from a shuffled deck of standard playing cards. The player who draws the lowest card (aces are low) deals first. The dealer shuffles the deck. Cribbage etiquette dictates that the dealer offer his opponent an opportunity to cut the deck after the shuffle to ensure the dealer cannot stack the deck in his favour, though in non-competitive matches players often agree to forgo this last step. The dealer then deals out six cards each to himself and his opponent in an alternating fashion starting with his opponent. Each player must throw two cards into what is called the dealer's crib – an extra four-card hand that the dealer gets to count at the end of his turn. After this, the non-dealer (or the pone, in crib language) cuts the deck and the dealer turns the top card face up. This card – referred to as the cut – is used by both players when counting their hands. If the cut is a jack, the dealer scores two points for heels. (Two for his heels, is what some players announce when this occurs). To clarify, at this point there should be three four-card hands – one for the pone, and two for the dealer – as well as one face-up card on top of the deck.

Pegging

At this point, players begin pegging. The pone starts by placing one of his cards in front of him, face up, and announcing the value of the card (all face cards have a value of ten). The dealer then plays a card from her hand as she announces the combined total of the cards played – this running total is referred to as the count. The players alternate playing their cards until the count reaches thirty-one or neither player can play a card without making the count greater than thirty-one. When a player is unable to play a card, he or she says Go, and the opponent plays additional cards until the opponent also has no playable cards remaining in his or her hand. At this point, whoever played the last card scores one point (or two points if the last card played makes the count exactly thirty-one) and a new count starts at zero. The player who said Go during the previous count plays the first card for the new count. This process is repeated until both players have played all four of their cards. Note that the dealer is not permitted to play any cards from the crib.

During the pegging round points are scored in the following ways:

- Playing the last card without making the count exactly thirty-one, which is called a go (one point).

- Making the count exactly thirty-one (two points). Technically, the player scores one point for making the count exactly thirty-one plus one point for a go, but the standard practice is to combine these and state Thirty-one for two.

- Making the count exactly fifteen (two points).

- Pairing the previous card played (two points).

- Playing the third card of the same rank in a row for three-of-a-kind (six points).

- Playing the fourth card of the same rank in a row for four-of-a-kind (twelve points).

- Playing a card that makes a run of three consecutive cards. The cards do not need to have been played in order and do not need to be of the same suit. For example, a sequence of 9, 7, 8 would qualify as a run (three points). Runs of four (four points), five (five points), six (six points), or seven (seven points) also score. Aces can go towards only the low end of an A-2-3 run, and runs do not roll over – K-A-2 does not score points.

If a play is made that qualifies for points in more than one way, the player gets the sum of the points for each scoring method. For example, if the first three cards played are 4, 5, 6, this would result in five points being awarded to the player who played the 6 (three points for the run of three plus two points for bringing the count to fifteen).

Once a new count has been started, cards from the previous