a2zcribbage.com

Great site for online play, designed and run by a longtime player.

It saddens me greatly that more people aren't into this beautiful game.

I guess it's time to let this thread die....

just played this game for the first time a few weeks ago.

thought it was fun.

look forward to playing it more often

Awesome! Feel free to post any questions/thoughts.

I feel so lucky that I grew up playing games, including cribbage. Great for the mind.

Started playing at age 6. No one would be my partner until my grandfather said he'd play with me. My older brothers said they'd help me. I said I'd do it myself. I made some strategy errors, but could count, peg, and work the pegs OK.
<<cribbage savant

Someone did a huge data pull from an online site (old yahoo??? can't remember and can't find the article).

It had the #1 difference between winning and losing (aside from first dealer) was OPPONENTS average crib score-i.e. being defensive in what cards to discard and OPPONENTS pegging--i.e. being defensive in pegging.

Quick anecdote. Was playing a game with my daughter-in-law (cribbage newb) vs my two sons. We are up 118-113 with first count. I make the statement that its over. My son (husband of DIL) says-- "no, its 3 on 1 and we have her".

Sure enough son plays a 3, daughter-in-law pairs it, 2nd son starts giggling and trips the 3 for 6 and they go on to peg out.

The whole steal the points of someone miscounts thing is BS. Hate when people play that way (which I think is who official tournaments play).

Haha yeah, pairing leads is a huge error most rookies make. Depending on my opponent, I won't do it unless I have the 4th. The pegging phase is the the most important, yet also most underestimated part of the game.

I love this game so much.

First street, you're pone with 888554. How do you play it and why?

There was a bit of discussion about this hand recently and frankly, I was surprised by some responses.

84. 54 is too dangerous to toss. Gotta play D here. (This assumes we are not near the end game with a chance to go out with first count). 85 makes no sense. 55 is suicide. 88 why?

Lead the 8.

What am I missing?

Haha pretty much my thoughts.

I'll say more after/if more people chime in.

84 and it's not even remotely close.

He said it was first street.

Yeah 84 seems like a no-brainer.

Never heard of cribbage hands referred to as streets. Been playing since age 6. I'm 52.

(Or is that just a poker terminology recently applied to cribbage)?

Ditto

I've always played that way (25-30 years). Streets are 30 hole segments. 1-30, 31-60, etc.

Yeah, that's how I've always heard the board segments described.

Good to know I'm not losing my mind. Most people thought 84 was best, with the others touting 54. I don't like that play for obvious reasons, but it's preferable to what a friend of mine (whose play I used to respect) said: 'I don't love throwing connectors, so I probably toss 55.' I'm never tossing dealer a pair here LDO. Our crib, obv tossing 55.

Seems like a pretty standard spot that I didn't think much of until the discussion began. Thanks for all your input, I'm hoping to revive this thread.

84>>>88>>>>>>>>>>>>54>>55


The only argument I see for tossing 88 is that 8554 is improved by any cut card except a 9, although a 7 improves the crib more than your hand. 8855 only improves on 4 cards.

Saw some stats somewhere about the winningest players on some site. The biggest delta was lower scoring in the opponents crib.

84>>>>>>88. Dealers frequent throw 6-7-8-9 combos into their own crib. Probably on average 55 is worse but 88 distribution probably includes more cribs 12 and over than 55.

Bingo.

This is an aspect of the game that bad players tend to underestimate. It's not so much about improving our hand tremendously as it is not giving the dealer a shot at a big crib.

To me, it's 84 by a landslide. I'm never throwing 88 or 55 in this situation. There is just no need to. Even 54 is pretty risky, but much better than throwing a pair, especially 5s or 8s.

Is minus 5 for a non-scoring crib an official rule or is it just a non-standard variation?

If so, throwing anything but 84 guarantees a scoring crib so 84 is 7 points better than anything else.

I've never heard of that rule/variation.

Yeah, I have never heard of that. Sounds dumb tbh....

There's some publicly available data on Crib EV. There are a few different tables out there that aren't identical but close enough to make you think that the numbers are fairly reasonable. Here is one for example: http://www.cribbageforum.com/SchellDiscard.htm

If you use those numbers, then computing the discard that will maximize EV[Our Hand - Opponent's Crib] is pretty simple really.

According to that table, here is the average value of your opponent's crib for each of the possible throws:

45: 7.26
48: 4.94
55: 9.37
58: 6.30
88: 6.82

That's a great resource, thx.

You're pone with 334578 in hole 89, opponent's in hole 73. WWYD?

3 and 8?