Cribbage

How to play cribbage

From the book's pages

• Two players, 52 cards. The ace is always lowest and counts one; jack, queen and king count ten. The score is kept with two pegs for each player: 30 holes in each row, up the outer row and down the inner on your own side. Round the board and back is 61 points; 121 is twice round. The front peg shows the total, the back peg the previous position.
• Both cut a card; the lowest deals. The one who does not deal is the «pone». The pone cuts; the dealer gives six cards to each. Each puts two cards in the «crib», which belongs to the dealer and is counted after the hands. As compensation the pone gets three points at the start of the game.
• The pone cuts again, and the dealer turns the starter. If it is a jack, the dealer says «two for his heels» and moves two holes.
• The play: the pone lays first and calls the value; after that the running total is called. A card of the same value as the last makes a pair, two points; three alike are a «pair royal», six; four a «double pair royal», twelve. Cards that together make 15, two points. A run of three or more in sequence, in any order, gives one point per card. You cannot go over 31: whoever cannot lay says go; exactly 31 gives two more points. Then the cards are turned over, and what is left in hand is played out. The last card gives one point, two if it makes 31.
• The show afterwards, the pone first, then the dealer, then the crib, with the starter as the fifth card: fifteen two, pair two, pair royal 6, double pair royal 12, run one per card, double run of three 8, double run of four 10, triple run of three 15, quadruple run 16, four-card flush 4 (not in the crib), five-card flush 5, «his nob» — the jack of the starter's suit — 1. When the pone reaches 61 in his show, he has won before the dealer gets to count.
• The players take turns dealing. Whoever loses a game deals first in the next.

My choices

• The book's sentences about go are not clear-cut, so here the usual rule applies: whoever laid the last card before a new count gets one point, two at 31. The app says go for you when none of your cards will fit.
• «Double run of three 8» in the book's table is the run twice and the pair; the app shows them separately (6 + 2), the sum is the same.
• The pone gets the three points only at the first deal of a game. Muggins is not included. Only against the machine — cards in hand do not bear two players on the same screen.
• The machine chooses its crib by the expected hand over all starters and plays the card that scores most there and then.

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