Cribbage Rules

Cribbage is a two-player (or, with a triangular board, three- or four-player) card-and-board game built around a small, deep scoring system: fifteens, pairs, runs, flushes, and one card called "his nobs." It's played to 121 points, tracked by moving pegs around a dedicated cribbage board rather than writing numbers down, and a full hand takes only a few minutes — which is exactly why it survives as a genuine two-player classic rather than a novelty.

Setup

Cribbage uses a standard 52-card deck and a cribbage board with 121 holes per player (two rows of 60 plus a game hole), or two pegs per player if you're using a simple track instead of a physical board. Cards rank Ace (low) through King, with face cards worth 10 for counting purposes. Deal alternates each hand — whoever dealt last hand does NOT deal this one, which matters because the dealer gets an extra scoring advantage from the crib.

For two players, the dealer deals six cards to each player, face down, one at a time. Each player then looks at their six cards and discards two of them, face down, into a separate four-card pile called the crib — the crib belongs to the dealer and gets counted after both hands, on this hand. This is the game's single most important tactical decision: you're choosing which two cards to give away to an opponent's scoring pile, or keep for your own dealer's crib.

After discarding, the non-dealer cuts the remaining deck, and the dealer turns over the top card of the cut portion — this is the starter (or "the cut"). If the starter is a Jack, the dealer immediately pegs 2 points for "his heels," before play even begins.

The play (pegging)

Starting with the player to the dealer's left (in two-player, that's the non-dealer), players take turns playing one card face-up from their hand, announcing the running total of all cards played so far in the current sequence. Face cards count 10, Ace counts 1, everything else counts its pip value. The running total may never exceed 31.

Points are scored during the play for:

• Reaching exactly 15: 2 points.
• Reaching exactly 31: 2 points.
• Pairs: playing a card of the same rank as the card just played scores 2 points; three in a row scores 6 (a "pair royal"); four in a row scores 12 (double pair royal).
• Runs: playing a card that forms a running sequence of 3+ consecutive ranks with the immediately preceding cards played (regardless of the order they were played in) scores points equal to the length of the run.
• "Go": if a player cannot play without exceeding 31, they say "go," and the other player scores 1 point for the go (or 2 if they can reach exactly 31 first). Play then restarts at zero with whoever still has cards.

Once all cards from both hands have been played, the count resets and each player scores their hand.

Scoring the hands (the show)

After the play, hands are scored in order: non-dealer's hand first, then dealer's hand, then the crib (dealer's). Each hand is scored using all four of the player's own cards PLUS the starter card — five cards total, treated as one combined group for scoring, and every valid combination counts, not just the best one.

• Fifteens: every distinct combination of two or more cards (from the five) that sums to exactly 15 scores 2 points. A hand can score fifteens multiple times from different card combinations.
• Pairs: every pair of same-rank cards scores 2 points (four of a kind scores 12 total, as all six possible pairs within it).
• Runs: a run of 3, 4, or 5 consecutive ranks (suits don't matter) scores points equal to its length; a run can also be scored multiple times if a rank is duplicated (e.g., 5-5-6-7-8 scores two separate 4-card runs, worth 8, plus the pair).
• Flush: if all four cards in the hand are the same suit, that's 4 points; if the starter is also that suit, it's 5. The crib is stricter — a crib flush requires the starter to match too, or it doesn't count at all.
• His nobs: holding the Jack of the same suit as the starter card scores 1 point.

The dealer's crib is scored the same way as a hand, using the four discarded cards plus the same starter.

A note on cribbage's long history

Cribbage is unusually well-documented for a game this old — it's generally credited to the English poet Sir John Suckling in the early 1600s, adapted from an earlier game called "Noddy," and the scoring system (fifteens, pairs, runs, and the board-and-peg tracking method) has stayed recognizably the same for roughly four centuries, which is longer than almost any other widely played card game on this site can claim with this much documentation. The distinctive board-and-peg scoring, rather than writing numbers down, is part of why cribbage feels different at the table than most other card games covered here — the board itself becomes a shared, visible record that both players can check at a glance, which is part of why cribbage disputes tend to resolve faster than disputes in games scored purely on paper.

Winning, and skunks

First to 121 wins. Many tables also track a "skunk" (winning while the loser is still under 91 points, worth double stakes in some scoring variants) and a "double skunk" (loser under 61) — these are optional stakes conventions, not part of the base rules, and only matter if your table plays for something.

Playing with three or four players

Cribbage is at its cleanest with two, but a three- or four-player game is genuinely common and uses the same triangular board most physical cribbage boards are actually shaped for. With three players, each player is dealt five cards instead of six, everyone discards one card to the crib, and then a single card is dealt face-down from the deck to make the crib up to four cards — that extra card belongs to nobody's hand and simply pads the dealer's crib. With four players, it's normally played as two fixed partnerships (partners sit across from each other), each player is dealt five cards, each discards one to the crib, deal and play rotate individually around the table rather than by partnership, but the two partners' pegging scores are combined onto one shared peg. The core scoring — fifteens, pairs, runs, flushes, his nobs — never changes between two-, three- and four-player cribbage; only the deal size and who owns the crib each hand differs.

Basic strategy: what to keep, what to give the crib

The single biggest strategic decision in cribbage happens before the play even starts: choosing which two cards to discard to the crib. If you're the dealer, the crib is yours, so discarding cards that combine well together (a pair, or two cards five apart that might complete a run or a fifteen with the eventual starter) is usually correct, since you're keeping the value for yourself either way. If you're NOT the dealer, the opposite logic applies — the crib belongs to your opponent, so discarding awkward, disconnected cards (a lone king and a lone 2, for example, which share no rank, no run potential and no easy fifteen) denies your opponent value rather than handing them a built-in bonus. During the play itself, leading with a card that doesn't invite an easy 15 or an easy pair against you (a 5 is generally considered the worst opening lead, since it lets an opponent hit 15 with any ten-value card) is the most common beginner mistake worth unlearning early.

The arguments this game actually produces

Cribbage's scoring density means it produces real disputes almost every hand. The most common: whether a player forgot to count a combination during "muggins" (where the opponent can claim any points the scoring player missed), whether a run can be double-counted through a duplicate rank, and whether pegging out mid-play (reaching 121 during the play, before the show) ends the game immediately. See the full dispute breakdown for the settled answer on each of these, the scoring deep-dive for worked examples of every combination type, and a printable pegging/scoring reference sheet to keep at the table.

Questions people still ask mid-game

Do you have to announce "muggins" to claim missed points, or does it happen automatically? Whether "muggins" is in play at all is itself a house-rule decision — in the strict tournament version, an opponent can claim any points you failed to count in your own hand, but plenty of casual tables skip muggins entirely and simply let a missed count stand. Agree on it before the game starts, not mid-argument.

Can the same five cards score a run more than once? Yes, if a rank is duplicated. Two 5s with a 6, 7, and 8 form two separate 4-card runs (5-6-7-8 twice, using each 5), worth 8 points for the runs, on top of the 2 points for the pair of 5s — 10 points from five cards, before fifteens are even counted.

What happens if nobody can reach exactly 15 or 31 and both players say "go"? The player who called "go" first still can't play; the other player scores 1 point for the go if the running count doesn't reach 31, and play restarts at zero with whichever player has cards remaining.