Mark6 says: Last Flowers die as our growing Season finally ends last night

mrob2199 says: Bruce the pegging should be fairly straightforward-if the pone leads an 8 would take the 15-a 2 or 3 lead would respond with the 7

james500 says: Hi. I did see the comments, yes. Thank you to you both for taking the time to comment so thoroughly. Had I been asked to predict the make up of that top 10, there's no way I would have guessed some of those. Any two cards that sum to 4 or less will require two additional cards to make fifteen, so A-2 and A-3 in particular stood out to me, but I guess that they are being discarded not with an eye to strengthening the crib, but because they don't "fit" with the other 4 cards in hand. JQT has spoken often about "the curse", namely 7-9, which also made an appearance on the list, so I won't say much more about it, other than to say that discards which sum to 16+ clearly cannot feature in the same 15/2. I was very encouraged to see 6-7 in the list, as it has a great deal of synergy with the rest of the deck. This too is a discard that John has written about in great detail, and the article on Cribbage Pro blog regarding "intrinsic points", is well worth reading. 3-4 also gets a good write up in the article, but is absent from your list. Maybe it's our little secret?! https://blog.cribbagepro.net/2012/10/discarding.html?m=1

kelliher says: Kelliher is his sweetheart wife! Hi Sally Ann. I've been following you. I'll tell Doug you said hello.

dec says: Mike is the more seasoned live player. I am just happy to get some those compliments from him, it means a lot. If you notice we are what would you say "waiting in the weeds". dec

JQT says: And if Pone holds say (A 7 7 X) and leads a 7 Card, we can outpeg Pone 26-to-1, I believe!

Eolus619 says: maybe it is really simple ...i need to earn more total pegging points than my opponent regardless of starting out as pone or dealer

JQT says: After playing several tens of thousands of hands, you just evolve to see that certain patterns emerge with a known deck and a given set of rules and scoring counts such as (15-2) and (31-2) and RUNS and PAIRS, etc. Specific combinations of cards almost always work together, especially when we are Dealer and so we can score with each card played. Combinations such as (A A) and (A A 2) alongside any Middle Card are extremely effective. I suppose you could learn this by just exploring the mathematics of it, although I know of no such Cribbage Book. I recommend "Probability Without Tears" by Derek Rowntree if you are into the maths but it's a tough slog if you aren't into permutations and combinatorics and probability, so it's probably just easier to acquire this from LOTS of playing against the best opponents you can find. It can seem daunting, as when pegging with four unique cards against Pone holding four unique cards, the number of relative pegging scores that can transpire is very large, maybe fifty different resultant scoring outcomes, perhaps even more, and less when card ranks are high or PAIRS are involved. The truly only EASY pegging hand in Cribbage is FOUR-OF-A-KIND! LOL

dec says: I remember that seven cut. dec

JQT says: I suppose that we could ask Matt about having "Submit Hand" include an option to ask "Allow Random Cut?" as it implements currently without asking, and if one said, "No" then it could ask for the puzzle submitor to then input the desired Cut Card. On those very rare occassions when I submitted a puzzle and wanted a certain card to be the Cut Card, it required submitting, and then you had approximately a one in thirteen shot at getting the desired card (depending upon the hand, of course). Usually, it was not important, but when it was, I could delete my entry, and try again! Often, I was happy just to exclude perhaps a few specific Cut Cards, so that took less retries. But we could ask to have this become an option, using the gmail address below, which does get checked.