Why a garden path?

Cribbage keeps score with pegs on a board. Each player has two pegs, and every time you score, the back peg jumps past the front one. That slow hop along a long track reminded us of a snail on a garden path. So the board here is a path of 121 holes, and the pegs are snails. The bright snail shows your score, and the faded one behind it shows where you were before your last points.

Counting a hand is the hard part for new players, so after every hand a counting tutor lays out each fifteen, pair and run. It lights up the cards in each one and reads the total the way players say it out loud: fifteen 2, fifteen 4, and a pair is 6.

A bit of real cribbage history

Cribbage is an English game from the 1600s. Its invention is usually credited to Sir John Suckling, a poet at the court of Charles I who was famous as a card player and gambler. The credit comes from John Aubrey, who wrote short lives of well-known people later in the same century. Nothing else from the time backs it up, so it is best taken as a tradition rather than a proven fact.

What is clear is that cribbage grew out of an older English game called noddy, which was known by 1589. Noddy already had the count to 31 and the call of Go, but it had no crib. The jack of the turned-up suit was called knave noddy. Cribbage still gives a point for that jack, now called his nobs.

The first printed rules for cribbage appear in English game books of the 1660s and 1670s, among them Charles Cotton’s The Compleat Gamester of 1674. Early cribbage gave each player five cards. The six-card game to 121, the one on this page, later became the standard. It is still played in British pubs and right across North America. Americans call it a skunk when the winner reaches 121 before the loser gets to 91.

How to play cribbage

• Each player gets 6 cards and puts 2 of them face down in the crib. The crib is a third hand that scores for the dealer. The deal swaps every hand.
• The other player cuts the pack and the dealer turns up the top card, the starter. If it is a jack, the dealer pegs 2 for his heels.
• In the play, you take turns laying down a card and adding it to the count. Aces are 1 and picture cards are 10. Making 15 or 31 scores 2, a pair scores 2, three of a kind 6, four of a kind 12, and a run of three or more scores 1 a card.
• The count can’t go past 31. If you can’t play, say Go. The other player plays on if they can, then pegs 1, and the count starts again from 0. The last card of the play also pegs 1.
• In the show, each hand is counted together with the starter: 2 for each fifteen, 2 for each pair, 1 a card for runs, 4 for a flush in the hand (5 if the starter matches) and 1 for his nobs. The crib only scores a flush when all five cards are one suit.
• The player who didn’t deal counts first, then the dealer, then the crib. The first to 121 wins, even in the middle of a hand.

The helper and the garden animals

The discard helper tries all 15 ways to throw 2 cards. For each one it averages your hand over all 46 cards that could be the starter, then adds or takes away what those 2 cards are usually worth in a crib. When you are ready, switch on Count my own hands and pick your total before the tutor shows it. Muggins, where the other player takes any points you miss, stays off unless you turn it on.

You play the Caterpillar, the Tortoise, the Badger and the Owl in turn. Cribbage has plenty of luck in the deal, so even the Owl loses often. In 3,000 test games against each animal, a strong computer player won 93% of games against the Caterpillar, 64% against the Tortoise, 56% against the Badger and 50% against the Owl.

Tips

Keep the fives. So many cards are worth 10 that a 5 makes fifteens with almost any starter. Throw a pair of fives into your own crib if you must, but never into the other player’s.

Keep cards that work together. A 6, 7 and 8, or a pair with a card beside it, scores more than four cards that have nothing to do with each other.

Lead a low card. A 4 or lower can’t be answered with a fifteen. Try not to leave the count on 5 or 21, where any 10 scores 2.

Your turn

The Caterpillar is waiting at the top of this page. Start with the helper on, watch the tutor count a few hands, and see how far your snail gets.