Wednesday 3:52 AM

Eight nines and Queens, eight threes and sixes. More points pre cut this way though.

Wednesday 4:34 AM

I chose poorly

Wednesday 5:33 AM

Gambled the wrong way. What a gut punch of a cut!

Wednesday 5:44 AM

We need Seventeen Points as Pone to WIN, otherwise the Dealer at Hole 110 is virtually certain to defeat us. Therefore, what we place in the Enemy Crib does not matter.

(4 4 5 J) has only Four Cuts (6666) for a big payoff, while (5 T T J) has a Dozen Cuts (555, TT, JJJ, QQQQ) for a similarly large payoff, so it's not even close; Toss (4 4) has three times as much chance of allowing us a VICTORY.

Let's Toss (4 4) today.

After the 6 Card Cut, we would need to peg Nine Holes in order to WIN. Let's peg all we can to minimize Spread Points by which we are certain to LOSE. Lead the 5 Card.

Wednesday 5:57 AM

Cool, a Gougie puzzle.

The keep that starts with most, usually improves the most. When shooting for max, at a score like this, of course potential for double runs and 4456 and whatnot can throw the calculus. But when one keep starts with four, one with 8, and the one with 8 has plenty of double run potential...

Scope for defense is 0 because even if by some crazy stroke of fate this goes to an extra hand, we need to be in peg-out range, which requires ~14 points in hand+pegging.

Damn, there’s that six cut I was betting against. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the “theoretically optimal play” in cribbage not only doesn’t work well, but actively screws you over a substantial minority of the time.

Rather than go for spread points, I like to try to pull off a crazy one-in-a-million win, because sometimes it works, and that’s a lot more exciting to me than losing by a couple fewer points. There are other reasons to not like spread points too, and I thought some of the arguments proposed in their favor recently were rather specious, but I’ll leave that alone. So I will play desperation defense and lead the ten of diamonds. This configuration is probably worth faking a flush with, and I’m slightly more likely to try to dump my five next than play a Jack, pretty much a tossup between Td and Th though, worth one game in a million.

This is a game I played against one of the better players on cardgames.io, someone who goes by “Denmark”. If he actually IS from that country, given how unpopular our little hobby is there, he might well be the best crib player in all the realm. The ranking system on cardgames.io is non-existent, but I run into him all the time, he always plays well, or at least is no more mistake-prone than I am, and I have terrible luck against him too. I’d say he wins like 75% against me over the maybe three dozen games we’ve played over the last couple of years. Indeed, one of the reasons I decided to annotate a game with him was to study his play habits more closely. This game went to nine deals.

I won the cut, so we start at 0*-0.

I dealt myself 788TJK – easy discard, throw the touching TJ in the crib. The odds of a run to a 9 cut tossing the JK don’t outweigh the substantial superiority of TJ to JK as a crib toss.

Denmark also had an easy call, tossing 63 to hold 5TJQ.

The cut was the right nine, so I have a 12 point hand and 9TJ?? In the crib. Certainly max defense is called for. Not breaking any molds this game. So it’s me dealer with 788K vs Denmark as pone with 5TJQ.

Pegging went: Q-8(18)-J(28-1)//8-5(13)-K(23)-“go”-7(30-1)//T(10-1)

Denmark led a Q, I don’t think I’m courting much controversy in saying that a five lead would have been better. I play an eight, first because I have two of them, second because it drives up the count more.

When he got a “go” with his Jack, I of course think he has a five, and the eight has fewer losers absolutely speaking anyway. So pretty simple call to lead the 8. The rest of the play was unremarkable. Holding him to two points, could have been worse. My crib did pretty well, 369TJ.

2.) 19-12*

Positional dynamics haven’t changed all that much at +13/-4 vs +11/-6 at 0*-0, and I’m basically leaning toward defense.

Denmark dealt me A5688T. I think tossing 5T to hold A688 is out of the question at this score, so I threw A6 to hold the four-point 588T. A6 isn’t much of a balk in normal circumstances, but with two eights out of circulation it’s on par with something like 8J or A9.

Denmark held 2459TQ and made a smart discard, 5Q. This is best for hand+crib – when in doubt, face five, right? However, tossing 24 to hold 59TQ is only 0.2 worse in hand+crib, and having a five in hand is certainly worth something on offense, so I think it’s close to a toss-up between those two.

The cut was a 2. Happy to see that, I didn’t like holding only 4. Now I can certainly afford max defense in the pegging. So it’s me as pone with 588T vs Denmark as dealer with 249T.

This went: 8-4(12)-8(20)-T(30-1)//T-2(12)-5(17)-9(26-1)

8 lead is obvious. To his four response – “anything but a X” is a good rule of thumb in the pegging, I think, all else being equal, because Xs are so common that this is often enough what oppo wants you to play. And indeed here he did have a 9, so it would have given up a 31.

Leading the ten in the second series – straightforward, I’d hardly lead my five even though it would dodge a trap once in a while. And since Denmark’s *second* card played was a T, I felt there was some bias against his holding a pair of them. So pegging went about as well as could be hoped, yet again I only gave up a go and last.

Denmark’s crib was a disappointment – only two at A256Q. So things are looking pretty good next hand at… 27*-22, +11/-10.

Wednesday 5:57 AM

Not much of a decision.

Wednesday 6:57 AM

How far back do we need to push the dealer's front peg before we decide *not* to give him the pair of 4s? Or, will we still try for our own big hand anyway?

If this score were 104-98*, I'd throw 4-J and hope that dealer has a poor hand.

Wednesday 6:57 AM

Well Gougie00..4-4 is the path today..but with a six cut , the cribbage fairy has left the building

Wednesday 8:26 AM

As others say, more cuts this way to get close

Wednesday 8:42 AM

6 1/2 - 1 to hold dealer to ten points and might be well short still for us. So instead of playing a hunch ( 4 sixes ) I will go for game hole or close with 5 9 10 J Q cuts. Understand desperation here. dec

Wednesday 9:12 AM

Looks like I have to be the lonely soldier here today.

Tuff call for me here, but I have to split the 4's and work this through calmly and methodically. In this particular case, I did ok with my pick.
My logic on this one, involves reasoning through the options while holding the 4,5,10,10 and I'm not real worried about the 4/J toss to the pone's crib.
So, it looks like I netted 11 points and if I can peg 1-2, I will be sitting within my "peg-out" range of 6. Assuming the dealer does go out on us I like my chances with this hold versus the "herd". Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd rather have my hold/hand than tossing the pair of 4's into the jaws of victory for the pone..... sorry I mean the Crib.

Wednesday 10:36 AM

I thought of throwing a 4 and something else but ended up giving my opponent both 4s. I know we’re not supposed to judge throws by the turn-up, bout today I did.

Wednesday 10:37 AM

I was so upset that I misspelt ‘but’.

Wednesday 10:56 AM

It's the all or nothing cut today for sure - of course the miserable 6 is cut, which in no way means we should've kept it any other way...Let's try and earn a few pegs to minimize the spread point loss. We have 5/13 possible face card responses to which we can score 2 points, which is a likely response to our 5 lead, and the same number of scoring responses by dealer (5) if we lead one of our 10's, which dealer is less likely to play - so I'll lead a 5, but clearly this matters only in games in which spread points may be key.

Wednesday 2:02 PM

We need 17pts to go out. 5-10-10-J (4-4) has two cuts for 17pts (5H, QH), five more for 16pts (55, QQQ), one for 15pts (9H) and five more for 14pts (999, 1010). So I think this will give us the best chance of winning therefore I'll throw the 4-4.

Wednesday 2:04 PM

At 104-110* playing an Offense strategy for the pegging the Win/Loss %s are:

Offense__________Win %______Loss %
5-10-10-J_________20.9_______79.1
4-4-5-J____________4.5_______83.2
4-4-5-10___________4.2_______78.6
4-5-10-10__________1.4_______74.1
4-5-10-J___________0.3_______74.0

5-10-10-J is very much the best for Win % although significantly higher for Loss %s because of the risk of the 4-4. Even so I'll select the 4-4 to discard.

After the 6 cut I'll lead a 10 and play Offense:

Lead_________Our Pegging Points
10__________________1.30
J___________________1.28
5___________________1.22

Wednesday 3:05 PM

With dealer needing 11 points to win and first count on the next deal, there is no reason to consider anything other than holding the cards with the greatest potential value. N/D has several ways to score from 14-17 points; keep all those scoring avenues open. Lead 10H and take any pegs offered. HalscribCLX says it all for me.