Today, Sena “suggested” that we try make up our own version of the 11-card cribbage rumor. Recall that I picked up the idea from the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) web site that two of the many variations of cribbage are the 11 and 13 card games. I had e-mailed the ACC on Friday (two days ago) about the rules for them.
Based on the other oddball variants we’ve experimented on since last week (see my post, “Oddball Cribbage Variants Marathon Today and a Catatonic Squirrel!”), we dealt 11 cards, threw one card to the dealer’s crib, inspected our hands and tossed 3 more cards to the crib, making the crib 7 cards. That left 8 cards in our hands.
Predictably, pegging was not a big event, but counting the outrageously high hands and crib was. We had to use the cribbage scorer program developed by someone pitching the 9-card cribbage game on a Reddit cribbage thread.
It works sometimes but there is a hiccup with it not allowing input of face cards, which leads to problematic scoring. But for the most part, it works.
The short story is that we scored so high that we played only 3 hands before Sena won! Did that make the game faster? No, of course not. We spent over an hour trying to count our hands and cribs and that includes manual counting and giving up and resorting to the scorer program.
Sena’s 1st hand was 58 points according to the scorer: fifteens for 40 points; runs were 12; pairs were 6. Her cards are above the board (she was pone) and my 8-card hand and 7 card crib are below the board. The 2nd and 3rd hand were also horrendous. Sena won.
When we finished, I noticed that the ACC expert had answered my email. He had just got back from a big ACC tournament in Reno, Nevada. He asked several cribbage pros about the 11 and 13 card variants. Nobody had even heard of them, much less played them. He even asked the editor of Cribbage World magazine, his usual contact for questions like ours. He’s never heard of either one of the variants. This is despite their being mentioned on the ACC Article Library, quoted below:
“Did you know that there are at least 18 variations to the BASIC game of cribbage? There is the basic 2 or 4 handed game, and then there are the 5 card, 7 card, 11 card and 13 card cribbage games.”
I think that settles the question about the 11 and 13 card variations. They are part of the fascinating mythology of cribbage. I’m sure there’s more.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 