Sunday 3:09 AM

I would break up the A-2-3 combo.
If not discarding 2-3, I'd choose to keep 3-5-7-7 (A-2), or perhaps A-2-7-7 (3-5).

   

Sunday 5:19 AM

My punishment for being cute. Initially thought 3577. Changed my mind.

   

Sunday 6:06 AM

Keep 6 points, low cards to my crib. Pondered the 2-3 or 5-7 toss but to me this has all cards working well together

   

Sunday 6:15 AM

When in doubt...Still holding a combined 6. A2 a very weak throw especially when holding a 3.

   

Sunday 6:27 AM

If we Keep (A 2 3 5) and Toss (7 7), then after Eight Cuts (6666, 8888), we only get Five Points in our Hand, although perhaps a nice Crib. If you read this site often, many of you already know that I am not too fond of this hand.

And the WORST attribute of Keep (A 2 3 5) is that it can only produce a Maximum of Eight Points, and that's if we 'snag' a Double Run, which would not even occur 20% of the time. Still, there are places on the board where Toss (7 7) might be a viable option. But I don't believe that it is optimum as the First Dealer. And we have other 'doors' to knock upon.

If, for instance, we Keep (3 5 7 7) and Toss (A 2), we automatically begin with Six Points, and this gets DOUBLED after a Dozen Cuts (333, 555, 6666, 77), which shall occur over 25% of the time, including those Eight "same card" Cuts (333, 555, 77). Now, I think with Toss (A 2) we're making an improvement over Toss (7 7).

Might I Toss (7 7) in a particularly close Endgame Battle at perhaps say (118*-115)? Yes, I suppose the Pegging Values of the "Small" Cards do have their place. But to begin a game, my preference between these two ideas is to Toss (A 2) all day. Toss (7 7) might make sense near any positional struggle later on in the game, but not here. Ah, we're almost done. One more 'house call' to make.

The only remaining task is now to look at the "Elephant in the Room," and that is if we Keep (A 5 7 7) and Toss (2 3). Even after decades of play, the ubiquitous power of Toss (2 3) never ceases to amaze any inveterate Cribbage Player. I once half-joked that, if and when able, as a Dealer Discard, Toss (2 3) is perhaps almost never bad, and rarely if ever can it be wrong! 💥

No other Dealer Discard in the game can attain an average of Seven Points in our Crib when it begins with no 'inherent' points from those two cards themselves! We know, in fact, that not only any Crib with a 5 Card, but also, any Crib with two cards that 'add up' to Five (or Fifteen), shall ALWAYS score at least Two Points. But in terms of growth, that is where Toss (2 3) really shines!

Let's Toss (2 3), our 'Old Friend and Pal,' with confidence.

After the 6 Card Cut, we have Ten Points in our Hand, with prospects for a good Crib. Had we chosen Toss (7 7), we would be sulking right now (but maybe Pone unloaded two 8 Cards, right?!). And, if we had tried Toss (A 2) today, we would now be holding a Dozen Points. Hats off if you went this way, my friend!

We should probably get ready to unload one of our 7 Cards after most leads by Pone, and it's a good exercise to think when and why and how we might do otherwise.

   

Sunday 6:40 AM

2-3 no slouch usually in crib. Well disguised pegger. dec

   

Sunday 6:55 AM

Sending the powerful 2-3…and since all cut ranks are winners in either the keep or crib the sacrificed two points from the hand is earned back.

   

Sunday 7:10 AM

Yes Goatman, (2-3) is powerful enough. (5-7) would be my second choice. A-2-3-7 improves on every cut, with a three card eleven. Of course A-2-3-5 has a four card eleven as well. Then there's 3-5-7-7, but that's more what Pone should do with this hand. Defense to the lead.

   

Sunday 10:11 AM

(2 3) is hardly ever a mistake. If the decision seems close, especially in the first stages of the game, I will almost invariably choose this throw.

   

Sunday 11:13 AM

Well the cut card makes me seem like a genius. But, in reality, 2-3 to the crib probably will win next time.

   

Sunday 3:04 PM

I think it's between 3-5-7-7 (A-2), A-5-7-7 (2-3) and A-2-3-5 (7-7):

3-5-7-7: 6pts + 4¼pts (Schell: 4.23) = 10¼pts

A-5-7-7: 4pts + 6¾pts (Schell: 7.00) = 10¾pts

A-2-3-5: 3pts + 5¾pts (Schell: 5.92) = 8¾pts

Potential:

3-5-7-7: Improves with AAA, 333, 4444, 555, 6666, 77, 8888 + 16xXs = 39 cuts = 39/46 = 84.84.8% up to 9/12pts with 333, 4444, 555, 6666, 77, 8888 = 20 cuts.

A-5-7-7: Improves with AAA, 2222, 333, 555, 6666, 77, 8888, 9999 + 16xXs = 43 cuts = 93.5% up to 8/10/12pts with AAA, 2222, 333, 6666, 77, 8888 = 20 cuts.

A-2-3-5: Improves with AAA, 222, 333, 4444, 555, 6666, 77, 8888, 9999 + 16xXs = 46 cuts = 46/46 = 100.0% up to 7/8pts with AAA, 222, 333, 4444, 555, 77, 9999 + 16xXs = 38 cuts.

Position:

As First Dealer positional hole is 8pts so I'll play Defense but try to score the average of 16pts or more.

Pegging:

With 3 low cards and a 5 plus a 4-card magic eleven I think A-2-3-5 will peg best.

Summary:

A-5-7-7 has the best starting value by ½pt and although A-2-3-5 has guaranteed improvement and should peg best A-5-7-7 has many cuts for improvement and 20 cuts for 8-12pts. So I'll throw the 2-3.

   

Sunday 3:07 PM

At 0*-0 playing a Defense strategy the dynamic expected averages and Win/Loss %s are:

_______________Pone's
Defense___Hand_Pegs____Crib_Total____W9 %____W10 %
A-5-7-7____7.00+(-2.22)+6.77=11.55____41.8____54.7
3-5-7-7____9.00+(-2.28)+3.89=10.61____38.7____51.7
A-2-3-5____6.85+(-2.15)+5.71=10.41____40.2____51.3

Defense______L9 %____L10 %
A-5-7-7_______25.5____20.6
3-5-7-7_______25.8____22.9
A-2-3-5_______28.3____23.9

A-5-7-7 is best for expected averages by 0.94pt. and is appreciably best for Win %s and lowest for Loss %s. So I'll select 2-3 to discard.

After the 6 cut I'll play Defense to the lead.

   

Sunday 4:10 PM

I thought I would add this little synopsis I scribbled down recently, but feel free to ignore:

Cribbage vs Chess 2023

With the explosion in game activity that occurred during the pandemic, Chess has seen exponential growth occurring since 2020. This growth ramped up even more following the release of "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix, and after some savory stories involving cheating at the highest levels of Chess.

Cribbage, sadly, has seen none of the recent growth that has occurred in other games, which is surprising, because as many of us know, it's one of the few, great two-player games in existence! Cribbage "popularity" is non-existent, and has remained fairly steady over the past few decades, with perhaps five or six thousand members of the American Cribbage Congress or ACC. Each month, "Cribbage World" continues to improve as a communication vehicle for "This Game of Ours," and yet sadly, its cover often depicts a loss of members occurring during every month.

During January, Chess.Com saw an average of about a quarter of a million NEW accounts being created on their servers -- EACH AND EVERY DAY!! And, during the last week of January 2023, their site "struggled" at times, with over ten million active members logged in at the SAME TIME, and they often had over ONE MILLION GAMES BEING PLAYED PER HOUR! On January 20, 2023, over thirty-two million, seven hundred thousand games of chess were played on just this one site alone!!

There are now several people on YouTube or Twitch who are often merely Commentators or Streamers of Chess Content who regularly pull in six-figures of annual income from their respective sites just COMMENTING on The Royal Game, and Chess continues to build on a history that includes two hundred years of archived or saved games, often including helpful, insightful, interesting, and instructional annotations that have been added over many years or decades.

Meanwhile, only a few Cribbage Sites exist to this date, and NONE of them save any games! The few sites that do get a lot of traffic do not draw as many players as they would if there were a few personable types who would launch a channel on Twitch or YouTube that featured "live" (or 'pseudo-live') games. And if those sites that do currently exist would FIX THEIR RANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS (or RNGs), they would draw a LOT of very strong players, those who often "join and leave" after seeing Double-Run, after Double-Run, after Double-Run, after...

When ostensibly the best-ever Cribbage Player, DeLynn Colvert, died a few years back, I was able to find maybe a dozen of his lifetime of played games from his own books and articles, only a few of which were annotated. Meanwhile, active Chess Grandmasters frequently play hundreds of online games EVERY WEEK in which anyone with an Internet connection may watch, and ALL of them are saved, and many are annotated!

Meanwhile, the best (and many would say only) high-level Cribbage Program, a family known as "Halscrib," has never been "ported" to play online, and indeed, the site where it could once be obtained was taken down (in frustration, I believe) by its creator over a decade ago. Tragically, in my recent contacts with the near-octogenarian author, during the course of several moves, the source code to the program has been lost! I literally cried when I heard this from him via email in late 2022.

I had written to the ACC in 2012, nominating "Halscrib" to be inducted into the "Cribbage Hall-of-Fame," an endeavor at which I failed, as it was denied entry. Yet to this date, few players can best it in a matchup of any length of games. Even George Rasmussen (or "RAS" as he is often known) admits that he has only amassed about a 52% to 53% Win Rate against this program, and he has stated that, "It's my toughest opponent."

If the Halscrib "engine" or code had been acquired and implemented (ported) as an online program, and then administered effectively, I have no doubts whatsoever that Cribbage would now be sharing in some similar sort of "boom" in growth. No, it will probably never exceed that of Chess, or even ten percent as much, but it would certainly have a much larger new contingent of players and members than it enjoys currently. Cribbage may always be less popular than Chess, but should it remain TWO THOUSAND TIMES less popular?! The "window" for growth is still wide open, yet nothing has been occurring in the realm of the development of having a Cribbage Personality create a site that draws in tens of thousands (or more) interested people to the game. Is a tremendous opportunity being squandered?

Sites such as "Hand of the Day" get postings about daily Cribbage puzzles from a few hundred people, and this site went "live" in 2007. But this is merely a "puzzle-based" Cribbage site; you cannot play a game here! Quite a number of those who post here regularly have been winning in many online and even local, "in-person" tournaments. This just shows a small inkling of the power of online play and possible recruitment potential. Cribbage needs an online character, literally: a personality. But such a site needs a robust, strong, Cribbage "Engine" with a superb Random Number Generator.

Now, to be fair, the ACC has developed an active, online points system, and I also think there is much to admire about their youth teaching effort, but the difference between what the Online Cribbage World IS, and what it COULD BE, is enormous! And yet the ACC seems mostly "fixated" on a few "live" tournaments played each year, a commitment that involves travel costs, hotels costs, and entry fees, all borne by the players. The average member is likely over "retirement" age, and the entire ranking and points system seems to reward longevity rather than "mere" playing strength. I had a paid membership for several years, but I'm in no condition to travel, and I have issues simply holding onto my cards or clicking a mouse repeatedly without all my fingers going numb!

I once actually developed a "Dual Rating System" idea for Cribbage that I suppose was never sent to the ACC, but it would append an "Elo Rating" figure (much like that used in Chess) to the existing rating. Arpad Elo was a Hungarian physics professor who developed an excellent way to assign a number to real playing strength and skill in two-player games. We really do not know when skill "peaks" in Cribbage players; for Chess, it falls off in most players rapidly after age forty-five, but Cribbage knowledge is probably not acquired at such a rapid pace, so players may not peak until much, much later!

No doubt, a handful of people might be doing well under this antiquated system: probably the airlines and the hotels, in particular! But c'mon: Chess.Com is seeing 250,000 NEW ACCOUNTS BEING CREATED EACH AND EVERY DAY as I write this! Imagine if we had just a small piece of such growth in Cribbage! It's a shame, and frankly a sin, that we don't.

Chess actually does have an ACC-like "body" that governs the game, FIDE (with a French acronym, and a Russian, or rather Soviet, history, what could go wrong?) has traditionally run the World Chess Championship, and they oversee the rules, etc. But FIDE has been notoriously slow to change, and is often seen as inept and even corrupt. The current world Champion, Magnus Carlsen, has decided NOT TO DEFEND his title, and he has sold his Norwegian company to Chess.Com! One of the other most popular and strongest grandmasters, Hikaru Nakamura, now refers to himself as a "Streamer," one who works to generate online chess content. He still enters and plays in some of the top FIDE-sponsored events, but he is no longer dependent upon them for income. And yet FIDE is still trying to impose -- a dress code!

All Cribbage lacks to have such a "spark" ignited to popularize the game is a programmer who could "port" the game online and do it PROPERLY, and a personality to demonstrate the excitement of playing the game! And these could even be the same person. (It maybe could have been the guy writing this, had the Internet existed four or five decades ago; alas, I am barely healthy enough to write this.) But sadly, we seem to be lacking in BOTH areas of expertise, and even worse, the best "code" we had has already been ignored, and is now apparently lost.

I wanted to drive up to Canada a decade ago and offer Hal a few thousand bucks to buy the source code for his program, but I've struggled with health issues since I was just a teenager in 1972; and frankly, I didn't want to offend Hal in any way. It is a mistake of omission that I never asked him his price, because now, his source code appears to be lost. It's easy to be mad at him for not archiving his work, and maybe even easier to be mad at myself for not making that half-day trip, but we might also look at ourselves and the organization and benign leadership that failed to acknowledge the work of a brilliant programmer, and then once forgotten, allowed his effort to be blown away like dust in the wind, and into the sands of time.


- j q t -