This is a red-letter day! First of all, I saw this article on line about how older people can stay sharp and fit. One of the suggestions for cognitive fitness was to play “complex card games.” Cribbage counts (literally) because today, Sena had a Raggedy Ann hand!
A Raggedy Ann is, as my old medical school pathology textbook authors put it, “not excessively rare,” but it’s uncommon enough that it can trip you up on how to count the points. It consists of 8-7-6-A-A with one of the aces being the cut card, of course. It’s worth 13 points.
First count the 15s, which are cards adding up to 15: the 8 and the 7, the 8 and the 6 and the A diamond, the 8 and the 6 and the A club in the crib, finally the 7, 6, and the two A’s=8 total. Add the three card run 6,7,8=11; then add the A pair for 2 more=13.
What’s hilarious about this is that we thought it was 11 points—which is another weird hand called a Raggedy Andy. It consists of 8-7-6-2-2. But because Sena’s hand had aces, the other 15-point combo was hard to pick out. Both hands are often miscounted.
Substitute deuces for the aces and try to count it. You should come up with 11 and that’s the Raggedy Andy.
Another funny thing about this is that when I was looking on the web for the odds on getting these hands, the AI (which always comes up) got it all wrong, saying “In cribbage, a “Raggedy Ann” hand refers to a hand with a score of 28, which is also known as a “28-hand”. This hand is quite rare, with odds estimated at about 1 in 15,028.” The second time I searched, AI corrected itself and got it right.
As far as I know, there’s no particular name for a 28-hand. Also, I couldn’t find any information of the statistical likelihood of getting a Raggedy Ann or a Raggedy Andy. I couldn’t find any explanation for how the hands got their names either although many assume that it’s because the count is so—raggedy.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s tough to spot one of the fifteens in the Raggedy Ann. Check out the American Cribbage Congress web site for more cribbage lingo.
This kind of gets us pumped for hoping one of us will get the very rare 29 hand.
By the way, the other thing we did today was to plug in the automatic card shuffler to top off the charge, so we both hand shuffled. We plugged it in at 10:30 am and it wasn’t fully charged until 4:30 pm. And you’re supposed to get 2,000 shuffles out of it, and I’m pretty sure we’re nowhere near that. Anyway, shuffling was a lot less noisy.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 