Tag: cribbage boards

29 Cribbage Board Antics

After a lot of encouragement from Sena, we got the 29-cribbage board. It’s a novelty board shaped like the very rare perfect 29 cribbage hand. You’re more likely to spot aliens in your back yard than to get a 29 hand—the odds are 1 in 216,580. See our 29 cribbage board antics in our YouTube video.

This is a follow up cribbage post, the most recent one being “Kitchen Table Cribbage” featuring our other new board, which was a v-tournament model.

We have a lot of fun playing cribbage and making the videos are a challenge, given that we’re still learning how to play. If we wait for the perfect video (meaning one without mistakes), it would be similar to waiting for the perfect 29 hand to show up.

On the cribbagecorner web site, there are interesting facts about the 29 hand probabilities. According to them, given the assumption that there’s a cribbage tournament somewhere in the United States almost daily, you should expect to see one 29 hand a year during tournament play.

One the other hand, there are many cribbage games, including kitchen table versions, occurring daily between commoners like us. Who knows how many 29 hands show up in all those unofficial competitions?

We’re not shy about comments from cribbage players helping us develop our skills. I suppose another way to do that would be to join a cribbage club. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) sponsors the ACC Grass Roots organizations which has about 200 such clubs across North America.

Players in the ACC Grass Roots clubs compete to earn points for awards including being crowned champion and for getting 29 hand. There is one ACC Grass Roots club in Iowa and it’s in Ankeny. It’s called the Capital City 9-game club (given that most club members get together to play 9 games about once a week or so).

Just for the record, the capital city of Iowa is Des Moines. Ankeny is about 13 miles north of there. If we were to join the Capital City club, that would mean about a 2-hour drive from Iowa City. Since the season runs from September to May, we’d be driving in winter weather conditions sometimes.

If you earn enough lifetime milestone points in the ACC Grass Roots club, you can earn a trip to big tournaments such as the annual ACC Tournament of Champions, usually held in Reno, Nevada. However, the ACC announcement says the 2020 Grand National tournament XXXIX will be in Sacramento from September 22-27, 2020. The first-place trophy is a gold pan. The last time anybody from Iowa won it was in 1990. He was from Des Moines.

The obvious question is why isn’t there an ACC Grass Roots club in Iowa City? I don’t know if there is enough interest, frankly. I did see a small 29 cribbage board at a local hobby shop here. It fit in the palm of my hand. The one we just got works out better for us.

I just found out that National Cribbage Day is celebrated annually on February 10, which is just around the corner! February 10 happens to be the birthday of Sir John Suckling, the creator of cribbage in the early 17th century. He was also a poet. According to the Poetry Foundation web page for him, his poetry showed him to be a cynical party animal, womanizer, and gambler. He invented cribbage from an earlier game called Noddy and it was gambling game. I gather it’s still the only game that can be play in an English pub for money. Cribbage came to American with the first English settlers.

Can you tell we really like playing cribbage? Please, no wagering.

New Cribbage Board Delivered Before Christmas–Barely

We got our new cribbage board today—after ordering it on December 15, 2019 by Priority Mail through the United States Postal Service (USPS). It’s a handsome Cherry on Hickory base V Tournament board, although we were puzzled by the label on the box which indicates that it was a Priority Mail 3-Day delivery when it was anything but.

In fact, my wife, Sena, took it down to the post office to ask a few questions about the meaning of Priority Mail. Our expected date of delivery was changed several times. Initially, it was December 18th or 19th. That morphed into December 21st, 22nd, and finally the 23rd. We got a couple of email notices saying it was to be delivered by 8:00 PM, even on a Saturday when we knew the Post Office was closed. A 3-day delivery turned into a week, which the USPS charges us a little over $13 and then says there’s no guarantee.

Sena found out that even if you order it delivered by First Class, depending on the weight, it gets bumped to Priority Mail. I’m guessing you pay more for First Class, but it sounds like you might not necessarily be any better off. Moreover, the multiple changes in expected delivery dates were called “unusual.” The worker was sympathetic, but sympathy was all Sena got. Sena was lucky she didn’t get the postal service worker working with another customer in the line next to her. All that worker said was, “There are no guarantees!”

In fact, we interrupted a cribbage game today when we discovered the new board was delivered on our porch. I set up both boards to reflect the scores.

Cribbage game in progress…

I can see that it’s easier to play a two-handed game with fewer chances for mistakes in pegging on the new board. The tracks are further apart. Knocking over pegs was not uncommon on the old board—unintentional of course.

The metal pegs that came with the new board fit the holes perfectly and the stowaway hatch on the back for them were safe because of the snug fitting wooden cover.

As I’m finishing this post, our cribbage game which started this morning around 10:30 AM, sits on the dining room table unfinished on both boards. That’s because it’s close to 50 degrees outside and Sena is watering the lawn and the trees.

We might finish the game—but there are no guarantees. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year–that’s a priority!

Shopping for Cribbage Boards

As you know, Sena and I have been relearning how to play cribbage, a traditional card game using a special peg board for keeping score and about a million rules. They say cribbage is a game that takes 20 minutes to learn and 20 years to master.

We’re having a lot of fun learning. We bought a set for about ten bucks. It’s a folding board, a little over 14 inches long and 3 and a half inches wide. The pegs are plastic and can be stored in a shallow slot on the back of the board—not protected by the plastic sliding cover. We found that out one day; luckily the pegs weren’t lost. You can find these in most hobby and big box stores where you live. We’re shopping for a new cribbage board.

The cribbage set came with a simplified set of rules, which you can read with a standard magnifying glass. The peg board has 121 holes and you sort of race around the board to see who gets to 121 first, pegging your progress by scoring special combinations of cards from a standard 52 card deck like cards whose pip values add up to 15; pairs; 3 and 4 card runs like 6, 7, 8: flushes and so on. Then you score your hand and your crib (an extra hand that only the dealer gets and to which both the dealer and non-dealer contribute). Because there are so many opportunities to score during the game, it’s a lot easier to peg it out on the cribbage board. You can find all the rules on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website. The basic game is for two players although there are 3 and 4-handed versions.

Because our board is a little on the small side, we’d like something bigger and easier to read. I’m not a shopper by any means, but I’m learning about the variety of boards out there.

As usual you can find anything on Amazon, but what we’re looking for is something large and for that we have to look in other places. It turns out there are tournament boards that the ACC recommends and uses in the many tournaments around the country. You won’t find tournament boards just anywhere. You most likely won’t find them in any local store where you live.

There are tournament boards that have two straight rows that go for 60 holes up and back (to cut down on pegging errors) and a line across the board at the 90 mark, which is the skunk line. If you don’t make it past the skunk line, you have the right to be embarrassed. It means you will never be a cribbage player worth two cents, probably lose your job, your home, end up in the gutter, be kidnapped by aliens, taken to another planet in a distant galaxy and displayed in a zoo for the rest of your natural life, living on a diet of wild hickory nuts, which the aliens think all earthlings survive on.

That means you should study cribbage closely and for that you need the right kind of board. We like to have numbers printed on the board—but it turns out the official tournament boards don’t have them. When I think about it, I guess it makes sense. There are only two peg holes worth paying attention to and that’s the one where the skunk line is and the 120th.

But it just looks nicer to have the numbers on the board. We’ve shopped around a little. There is a tournament board that is a special V-type version. There are two rows but the 2nd row slants away from your opponent, making it even easier to peg.

There’s a guy in Florida who makes a V-type with all the numbers and even images of little skunks on it. It’s a little bigger than ours, made of hickory and comes with one of three top playing surfaces to choose from: Cherry, Maple, and interestingly, something called Beetle Kill Pine which is wood from thousands of acres of pine trees that have been killed by a beetle that injects it with a dye, giving a bluish cast to the grain. He doesn’t mention whether the boards are disinfected or not. The board runs about 75 dollars if you buy the cloth carry bag (65 dollars if not and that doesn’t count shipping). The maker is very honest and tells you that he can’t promise that the pegs he makes will fit the holes. Hmmmm.

There are mom and pop outfits in places like Canada and Rhode Island which specialize in hand-crafted game items and they make gorgeous cribbage boards, one of which will set you back over 100 dollars. It’s about 29 and a half inches long and about 8 inches wide and the pegs are 2 and a half inches long. It’s called the Imperial, and well it should at the price. The same outfit also has another model which I later learned is a Century model, a vintage board with a busy top surface along with the peg holes around the edges. There are several different peg holes that allow you to score other things like skunks, “legs” (which I think are different from games and matches, but I’m not sure, unless it’s for how many of your legs the aliens hack off for every skunk you lose by), hickory nut brownie recipes, and ways to score up to about 900 points, for what I don’t know. There’s so much stuff on the board it’ll make your head swim, but it’s the least pricey of the higher end bunch we’ve been looking at. It goes for 50 bucks. Part of the description of the company says the founders “…believed that quality materials and painstaking engineering were tantamount.” I think they meant “paramount”.

The place in Canada makes pretty boards out of Canadian Hard Maple. The largest one is about 27 inches long by 8 inches wide and has a stowaway slot for the metal pegs and a deck of cards. Most storage compartments on cribbage boards have the kind of slots we have on our cheapo board, with a little cover that slides over the slot, which falls off and allows the pegs to escape to their everlasting freedom down the floor heat register. The Canadian model (called the Jumbo) has an artsy carved wooden cap which is secured by “powerful rare earth magnets.” Have fun playing if you can get the cap off. It’s priced at 65 dollars and that’s with the storage bag.

You know, our little 10 dollar folding cribbage board does get the job done. Happy holidays!