How to play Cribbage
Cribbage is two games at once: a small trick-free card game, and a counting exercise. The counting is where beginners lose, and it is the part that rewards practice.
There is a counting drill further down if you would rather learn by doing.
What you need
Two players, a standard 52-card deck, and a cribbage board — two tracks of 60 holes and two pegs each. The board is only bookkeeping; a pencil works.
Aces are always low. Q-K-A is not a run. Jacks, queens and kings all count 10 for fifteens, but rank as 11, 12 and 13 for runs.
The deal
- Deal six cards each.
- Both players discard two face down into the crib — a fifth hand that belongs to the dealer and is scored at the end.
- The non-dealer cuts, and the dealer turns the top card of the lower half. This is the starter. If it is a jack, the dealer immediately pegs 2 — "his heels".
Choosing what to throw is the first real decision: you are either keeping points or denying them, depending on whose crib it is.
The play
Starting with the non-dealer, players alternate laying cards face up in front of themselves, announcing the running total. The total may never exceed 31.
| Event | Points |
|---|---|
| Running total hits exactly 15 | 2 |
| Running total hits exactly 31 | 2 |
| Pair (same rank as the card just played) | 2 |
| Third of a rank (pair royal) | 6 |
| Fourth of a rank (double pair royal) | 12 |
| Run of 3 or more in the last cards played, in any order | 1 per card |
| Opponent cannot play without passing 31 ("go") | 1 |
| Last card of the play phase | 1 |
When neither player can add a card without exceeding 31, the total resets to zero and play continues with the remaining cards.
The show
Now each hand is counted with the starter as a shared fifth card — non-dealer first, then dealer, then the dealer's crib. Order matters: in a close game the non-dealer counting first can win before the dealer counts at all.
| Combination | Points |
|---|---|
| Fifteen — any cards totalling exactly 15 | 2 per distinct combination |
| Pair | 2 per distinct pair |
| Run of 3, 4 or 5 | 1 per card, once per distinct set |
| Flush — four hand cards same suit | 4 |
| Flush — those four plus the starter | 5 |
| Nobs — holding the jack matching the starter's suit | 1 |
The two rules people get wrong.
Fifteens count every distinct combination, not every pair of cards. 5-5-5-J-K is seven fifteens, not four: each of the three fives with the jack, each with the king, and the three fives together. That is 14 points before anything else scores.
Only the longest run scores, once for each distinct set of cards forming it. A double run of three is 8 (two runs of three, plus the pair) — never 3+3+2 counted some other way, and never with the shorter runs inside it added on top.
A crib flush is the one asymmetry worth remembering: in the crib, four cards of a suit score nothing. It has to be all five.
Counting drill
Cribbage's real barrier is not the rules, it is counting a hand quickly and exactly while somebody waits. So this is a drill rather than a game: four cards and a starter appear, you name the total, and it shows the full breakdown.
The starter is the outlined card. Count fifteens first, then pairs, then runs, then flush and nobs — that order is what experienced players use, because fifteens are the easiest to miscount.
Some deals are the crib, and the drill says which before you answer. It matters: a four-card flush is worth 4 in a hand and nothing in the crib, so the same five cards can have two different totals.
Loading the drill…
The four cards
Starter
Scoring here was checked against the reference hands — the 29, the double and triple runs, and the fact that 19 is impossible, which is why cribbage players call a scoreless hand "a nineteen".
Three things beginners get wrong
Throwing to the crib without asking whose it is
The crib belongs to the dealer. Throwing a 5, or two cards that make a run, is generous when it is your own crib and careless when it is not.
Missing points in the show
Under the strict rule, points you fail to claim can be taken by your opponent — "muggins". Many groups do not play it, so agree before you start, but count carefully either way.
Forgetting that non-dealer counts first
Near the end of a game this decides matches. If the non-dealer can reach the target by counting their hand, the dealer's better hand and crib never get counted.
Common variations
- Target score — 121 is standard; 61 is a shorter game.
- Muggins — claiming points your opponent missed. Agree beforehand.
- Three- and four-handed cribbage — different deal sizes, and in four-handed play it is a partnership game.
Cribbage needs a board, which is the only catch — see our two-player guide for where it sits among the alternatives.