Well, remember that Cribbage 29 board we lost in the move that I blogged about in December? They were out of stock until a few days ago. Sena ordered one and we should be getting it pretty soon. It’s a 10-inch board. The cut card printed on it is 5 spades.
So, we’ll have to have a rematch. Lately, we’ve been picking cribbage variations (but not like late last year!). We’ve been playing mostly 6-card, 7-card, and 10-card variants.
It’s funny, but the YouTube video of us playing a game on the 29 board in 2020 got a few more views (for a while) after I reposted it a couple of months ago with the post about the history of the 29 board. We had a rematch about 3 years ago and Sena won.
Neither one of us has ever been lucky enough to get a 29 hand because the odds of getting it are 1 in 216, 580. Now, the odds of getting a 28 hand are 1 in 15, 028. The only time I ever got that was in a Cribbage Pro computer game playing against Brutal last September.
We’ll have to make another video of the rematch after we get the new 29 board. Who do you got your money on?
Well, we played the 13-card cribbage game today and we survived it! I got to tell you; I don’t know how anyone would invent such a hairy cribbage variant. I got so mixed-up Sena had to bail me out on counting a complicated run.
What is ironic, if I had not had a problem with one of the counts, the game would have lasted about 20 minutes, give or take—just like the last few Calvinball Crib variants we’ve played. We’ve been through 6-card through 13-card versions and those are just the ones we’ve heard about.
It still makes me wonder whether there should be a new organization, the Calvinball Cribbage Congress (CCC), analogous to the American Cribbage Congress (ACC). The CCC could have their big annual tournament in Reno, Nevada (I think it’s at the J Resort (Casino/Sands). And we’d have to have special tee shirts with a distinctive logo.
Certain requirements would have to change, like the amount of time you have to finish a cribbage game at the CCC. In the time it takes to play 13-card cribbage, Santa Claus could shave his beard and grow it back. Of course, as you know, you have to be able to play a 6-card cribbage game in 15 minutes.
We’d need a special cribbage board and the likely candidate would be the Calvinball Cribbage board made in Canada.
Based on the currency exchange rate, the board would cost a little over $100 in U.S. dollars. The board is on the small side (11in x14in), so it would be easy to provide them for the thousands who would flock to Reno for the big CCC tournament—as long as you charge for them. The going rate for a tournament board the size and brand (CreativeCrafthouse, made in the good old USA) of the one we use is about $75.
You should write to the CCC President about it—except there isn’t one yet.
Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s time for 11-card cribbage! Recall, the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website has a cribbage variations page in which the unknown author reports there being many cribbage variants, including 11 and 13 card cribbage.
So, yesterday we played 12-card cribbage and we decided to address the 11-card variant today. We intend to tackle the 13-card variant “next year.”
We did OK, although I had a miscount (counted 31 in the play instead of 30 near the end of the game). Again, it took us about 20 minutes to play it.
Scores can be difficult to count so you might want to check on this link for the calculator.
We made up the rules because, of course, there are no rules. This puts any of these game variants into the Calvinball Crib category. This is because there are no established rules and the name just has a little fun with that name because of the definition of the name Calvinball:
“Activity reminiscent of the imaginary game of Calvinball (see etymology), in not following any 1994- discernible rules, or in which individuals act in a self-servingly inconsistent manner. Also (and in earliest use) as a modifier.”
Did you know there’s a place in Canada that makes a Calvinball Cribbage board? It’ll set you back $140. We can’t tell if there’s a tariff on it.
Did you know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has confabulated a description of Calvinball Cribbage? I copied it for you:
“Calvinball Cribbage is a humorous mashup of the chaotic, rule-free game from Calvin & Hobbes with traditional Cribbage, often involving themed boards or rule modifications, where the core idea is applying Calvinball’s fluid, make-it-up-as-you-go spirit to Cribbage’s scoring and play, adding wild, non-sensical rules like using mallets, changing hand values, or scoring points for silly actions, making each round unique and unpredictable, not a single defined game but a creative approach to Cribbage.
What it is (The Calvinball Aspect):
No Fixed Rules: Just like original Calvinball, there’s no single set of rules; the players invent them as they go.
Rule Changes: A key rule is that rules can’t be repeated, and players constantly invent new scoring, actions, or penalties.
Props & Actions: You might use mallets, balls, trees, or make up actions like “scoring three points for pointing at a cloud” or “losing a turn for looking left”.
How it Applies to Cribbage:
Themed Boards: You can find or make custom cribbage boards featuring Calvin & Hobbes, adding visual flair.
Modified Scoring: Instead of just points for pairs and runs, you might add a “Hobbes Bonus” for a specific card or penalize for “too much logic”.
Strategic Chaos: Players still play cribbage (cards, pegs, crib), but the gameplay is constantly disrupted by invented rules, turning strategic plays into potential jokes or absurd victories.
Example Calvinball Cribbage “Rules”:
“If you play a 7, you must hop on one foot until your next turn”.
“The crib gets 5 points if it contains a card with a face on it” (referencing Calvin’s drawings).
“A ‘skunk’ is achieved by making your opponent laugh out loud”.
In essence, Calvinball Cribbage is about injecting unpredictable fun and silliness into the structured world of cribbage, making it a game of spontaneous creativity rather than strict strategy. “
How do you feel about AI now? You know, I wonder why somebody hasn’t yet come up with a new club: Calvinball Cribbage Congress (CCC). Somebody could make a cool tee shirt for the club.
As promised, we played a game of 12-card cribbage on the tournament board today. What an adventure! We both missed pairs in counting high scores on one round (that we noticed after viewing the video)—but we got through it.
I don’t know of anyone else who’s made a video of this wacky variant, but let me know if you do. You know, it’s remarkable, we practiced it all morning and kerfuffles were the rule when it came to counting hands. You’ll see them. Yet we still finished the game in about 20 minutes because the scores were so high!
This is Calvinball Crib for sure. We don’t know where this tangent will go next.
You know the winter is getting long when Sena and I talk about trying to play 12-card cribbage. We’ve come up with a way to manage the deal and the crib and we’ll try to play it tomorrow.
Sena’s been bugging me for a while now to try playing both 11-card and 12-card cribbage—despite the fact that no rules exist for them. There is the mystery of the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) having a section in their cribbage history which clearly claims that:
“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. “
Notice that the author (who doesn’t have a byline) says there are both 11-card and 13-card variations. On the other hand, I’ve spoken with someone else at the ACC who knows everything there is to know about tournament cribbage and he and everyone else he asked at a recent tournament never heard of these variants. And you can’t find them anywhere on the web.
This whole Calvinball Crib thing comes from our having tried 7-card, 8-card, 9-card, and 10-card cribbage. Sena wore me down. So, we cobbled together some rules for 12-card cribbage. We’ll let you know what happens. If anybody out there has suggestions and comments, let us know!
So, as long as we had the cribbage tournament board out, we decided to play 10 card cribbage yesterday. This is not a game for mindfulness, at least for me. Each player gets 10 cards. You have to sort them into two 4 card hands and the dealer gets the usual 4 card crib.
That’s a lot of cards to sort through. I get a little flustered trying to figure out what to keep and what to throw to the crib. I have to decide which 4 card hand to start the play.
The more cards you have, the higher the scores. Some games take only about 15 minutes despite the plethora of scores you have to wade through. Overall, in tournaments you have to be able to play a 6-card game in 15 minutes, so it seems ironic you can do the same in a 10-card game.
You have to be mindful, in a way, to play these Calvinball crib variations. But I can get a little hyped. Maybe you can tell.
We’ve been searching around for our 29 Cribbage Board. It’s in the shape of 29 which is the highest score you can get in cribbage. The hand is typically shown with three 5’s and the nob Jack and the cut card is the other 5. This is usually a diamond 5, but the heart or the spade 5 is also shown on some boards. The odds of getting this hand are 1 in 216,580.
Sena didn’t find it after a thorough search top to bottom of our house, so it must have gotten lost in the move last year. One of the reasons why this suddenly became an issue of national importance is that I read another one of those long historic articles on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website—which never lists the bylines of the persons writing them.
It turns out that a guy named Edward M. Hirst in Canada who first designed and started making the 29 board by himself back in the early 1950s. Customers would wait months for them. They weren’t mass-produced until two years after he died. Crisloid, Inc. (based in Rhode Island) made them for a while and this name is familiar to me because I shopped for a giant cribbage board from them a few years ago. They had stopped making the 29 board long before then. Interestingly, they made one of those very complicated continuous 3 track cribbage boards with complicated scoring for things like “Legs” and other features that eventually were more of a hallmark with another famous cribbage board maker–Drueke Co. And then Drueke Co. started making the 29 boards.
Eventually manufacturing of the 29 boards moved to Taiwan because they could be made more cheaply there. Nowadays, America’s role in sales has moved to vendors, such as Hoyle, Bicycle, Walmart, etc. There’s a reddit thread which shows a picture of a 29 board which contains a short history of the board.
Anyway, by way of personal history, we started playing cribbage again in 2019 after a 20-year hiatus. I have a dim memory of us experimenting with several card games back then, including cribbage. And then we dropped card games for a long time. And about 5 or 6 years ago we got a 29 board, because it was interesting and cheap.
I made a YouTube video of the game. It got about 1,800 views. It had some of the features discussed in the ACC history, which we think is really interesting. The nob Jack and 5 cut card were diamonds. There was a 121 hole (which some boards don’t have, believe it or not!).
And there’s also a Cribbage Board Collector’s Society (CBCS). The interesting thing they point out is that no one has ever reported to them about finding a 29 board with the Jack and the 5 cut card in the club suit. I couldn’t find one on the web, even on Ebay.
We immediately shopped for another 29 board but the one we want is sold out. Until then, we can reminisce.
We’ve been playing Calvinball cribbage so much lately, we thought it would be nice to play a game of standard 6-card cribbage on a tournament board we’ve had for several years. It seemed to go faster than it really did. We finished the game in 26 minutes but we’ve been able to play faster than that (see the post and YouTube “15 Minute Push.”
We got the tournament board several years ago from a guy who was making and shipping them from Florida. Nowadays he markets them through Walmart. It’s CreativeCrafthouse.
It was a nice break from the chaos of cribbage variants like Wicked Cribbage and Crib Wars.
We hope you all had as nice a Christmas as we did. We played Wicked Cribbage! It’s an overlay variation of 6-card cribbage. This turned out to be more fun than we every imagined. Short story—I got skunked! We made a video of the hilarity. Happy holidays!
I watched the first half of the Colts vs 49ers game last night and I thought Philip Rivers didn’t look half bad for a 44-year-old guy who’s been out of the game for five years. Did you know he has 10 kids? OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system and that would be, what—the 44th time you’ve heard that since he took the field?
So what the Colts lost? His big family was up in the stands going crazy, cheering him on.
I read an article this morning which had Steve Young saying he could make a comeback at his age—which is 64. I couldn’t believe it. The same story mentions that George Blanda played for the Oakland Raiders when he was 48 back in 1975.
It got me wondering whether I could make a comeback as a general hospital consulting psychiatrist. Could I gallop up 6-8 floors of University of Iowa Health Care? You bet your bottom dollar—I couldn’t.
It’s hard to retire. Every once in a while, I miss hiking up and down the hospital with my camp stool, deftly swinging it around and sitting with the patients and families, telling medical students and residents all kinds of lies (I mean “wise old adages and pearls of clinical wisdom”).
I get a kick out of just wondering what it would be like. I get a vision of myself with a big, golden glowing aura of greatness around my head—until I come to my senses. Hey, nobody’s going to pay me a quarter million dollars to run the consult service for the few months I’d be able to limp around the hospital, falling off my camp stool when my legs go numb or the chair breaks.
It’s not like I can just throw a football like it’s nothing after 5 years. I’d have to prove I still have enough clinical smarts to figure out how to introduce myself (Hi! I’m Philip Rivers and you need to go long!”).
The Maintenance of Certification Circus is still a thing and it’s worse. I’m not saying doctors don’t undertake the arduous task of essentially retraining to be what they once were—because that’s not good enough anymore.
Last night, the camera caught Phil more than once being just as hard on himself as he was with other members of the team who weren’t in the right spot at the right time. Most physicians are perfectionists and if you’ve been out of the game for a while and you try to squeeze back in, you could wind up mumbling to yourself, “They don’t make footballs like they used to!”
I didn’t stay up for the second half of football game. It wasn’t because of anything Philip did or didn’t do on the field.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 