How to play cribbage

June 24, 2013 7:33 PM

Ok. So based on answers to more than a few AskMes about good games to play for two people, a friend and I got interested in cribbage. Trouble is, neither of us knows how to play, and we don't know anyone who does know, so it's down to deciphering rules/wiki/YouTube. Not easy - I get the gist, but some specific play questions remain.

1) What happens when I say "Go", but the other player can't play either? I.e., two "Gos" in a row. Who gets the point?
2) What happens when one person plays out their cards, but the other person still has cards?
3) Related to 2) in a more general way, what happens when you run out of cards? Do you just automatically say "Go" when it's your turn?
4) What happens after "Go" when the remaining cards play out to less than 31? What happens to the player who played the last card? What happens to the player who can't play because s/he's run out of cards?
5) After a round, do the played cards (including the starter and the crib) get shuffled back into the deck for the next round, or put aside?
Lastly, not related to play... 6) What is the point of the two-peg system?

posted by war wrath of wraith to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (9 answers total)

Best answer: 1. When no one can play, the last person to have played gets one point.
2. When only one person has cards, that person plays their cards (counting up to 31, getting points for two of a kind, etc just as if there were two people playing) until that person has played all their cards.
3. When you're out of cards, you don't have to say "Go" outloud but the other player(s) just skip you, as if you had said "Go."
4. When the remaining cards total less than 31, the last person to play gets one point. Nothing happens to the player who can't play.
5. All cards are shuffled back in at the end of every round.
6. The two-peg system helps you count up from where you started. It makes it easier to prevent tallying mistakes than just using one peg.
posted by matematichica at 7:45 PM on June 24, 2013

Response by poster: Ok, so in case of 2) and 3)... does the person playing automatically score a point for playing the last card?

Also: Cribbage for Dummies says that the dealer always wins an automatic point because s/he goes second. Please explain to this dummy.

Also: I read somewhere that "19" is an impossible number to call out. Why? Why can't I (for example) play face card, and my opponent plays a nine?

Thanks for your help!
posted by war wrath of wraith at 8:08 PM on June 24, 2013

Ok, so in case of 2) and 3)... does the person playing automatically score a point for playing the last card?

Yes.

Also: Cribbage for Dummies says that the dealer always wins an automatic point because s/he goes second. Please explain to this dummy.

I have never heard of such a rule, but I have only played with my family, so we may have been playing by variant rules.

Also: I read somewhere that "19" is an impossible number to call out.

I've never heard of that, either. 19 is a good play if you have an ace or a two in your hand. Is the rule you've heard that you can't play 19, or you just can't call it out?

Ah, wait—this may explain it:

19 Hand - 19 points is not possible in a single cribbage hand. Possible scores are 0-18, 20-24, 28 and 29. Since 19 is the only score under 24 not possible players often shout "19 hand" when in fact they have 0 points. [source]

The point is not that you can't call out 19 during play; it's that (allegedly) there's no hand of four plus the starter card that can possibly add up to 19 when you count points at the end of a round.
posted by Orinda at 8:23 PM on June 24, 2013

Cribbage for dummies is either wrong or being kind of vague. The dealer *usually* gets last card, but if they have to play out extra cards after a go, that can change. What Cribbage for Dummies *may* mean is either the dealer will get a last card or they will get a go point at some time in the play.

As an additional point, there are very many places online where you can play cribbage against the computer, and a lot of them will post status messages counting scoring as it happens. A couple of games played against the computer may make the gameplay seem a lot more clear, since the computer will point out all the things you're not necessarily paying attention to (points for jacks turned up, etc).
posted by jacquilynne at 8:37 PM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also: Cribbage for Dummies says that the dealer always wins an automatic point because s/he goes second. Please explain to this dummy.

I have never heard of such a rule...

It's not a rule, it's just the way the maths work out. The dealer will always score at least one point in the count, no matter how bad his cards are.
posted by GamblingBlues at 9:55 PM on June 24, 2013

When I was learning to play recently I found that a phone app helped a lot. They suggest cards to play and show you the correct points for scoring. Why does the app think I have 18 points, for instance, and I only see 12?
posted by okbye at 7:02 AM on June 25, 2013

Yay cribbage! It's my favorite card game.

re 19: It is not referring to the pegging part of a hand but the second part when you count the points in your hand. It is mathematically impossible to score a 19 in cribbage. You may make a joke and say you have nineteen instead of zero. Do this, and a regular player should understand.
posted by Gor-ella at 8:15 AM on June 25, 2013

The dealer will always score at least one point in the count, no matter how bad his cards are.

That's not true at all. The dealer has a better chance of a scoring hand, since s/he doesn't have to worry about throwing potentially beneficial cards to his/her opponent's crib, but there's no reason the dealer couldn't have a zero-point hand, and crib as well.
posted by Kafkaesque at 12:37 PM on June 25, 2013

Since this seems so weird, I checked the actual quote on the linked page (which I didn't check originally because I assumed it was a link to a sales page for the book, not a link to a set of rules):

As you can see, the dealer must score at least 1 point in the play, no matter what happens; because he plays second, he’s bound to score the 1 point for playing the last card during some phase of the play.

So, they're referring to the fact that the dealer will always get either a go or a last card while playing down the cards.

Usually, he will get the last card point. The only way for him to not get the last card point is if he plays more cards than the other player at some point, and the only way for that to happen is if he gets a go and still has cards to play. In that case, he'll get the point for the go.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:32 PM on June 25, 2013