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Two-Player Cribbage, in Full

Two-handed six-card cribbage is the game — the one the rules were written for, and the one every variant is measured against. It is also the only version where the dealer's advantage is large enough to shape how you should play every single deal.

The shape of a deal

Six cards each, two to the crib from each player, one starter cut, then the play, then the count. The order of the count is fixed and it matters enormously: pone counts first, then the dealer's hand, then the dealer's crib.

That order is the whole reason cribbage has close finishes. When both players are near 121, pone counting first means pone can win with a hand the dealer would have beaten — the dealer's superior cards never get counted. It is also why the count stops the moment somebody crosses the line: nothing after the winning peg is counted at all. Our server enforces exactly that, in exactly that order.

The full sequence, including the cut for first deal and what happens on a misdeal, is in the complete rules. This page assumes you know it and deals with what to do.

The dealer's advantage

The dealer gets the crib, and the crib is worth something like four to five points on an average deal. Pone gets to count first and pegs slightly better during the play, which claws some of it back — but not all of it. The net effect is that the deal is worth roughly two points, and in a game of eight to twelve deals that is a substantial head start for whoever deals more often.

This is not a small refinement. It is the single most important structural fact about two-handed cribbage, and almost every piece of strategy below follows from it. A player who discards the same way whether or not the crib is theirs is throwing away most of a point a deal, every deal.

Playing as pone

Your job is defensive at the discard and aggressive during the play.

• Never throw a 5 to your opponent's crib unless the alternative is genuinely terrible. A 5 is the most valuable card in the deck because sixteen cards are worth ten — and we measured what that is worth: see what each discard gives away.
• Break up your own combinations before you feed theirs. Two cards that are useless to you separately are still dangerous together in their crib. A 7 and an 8 in your opponent's crib is a fifteen you handed them.
• Throw wide and unconnected. A King and an Ace, or a Queen and a 4 — cards that cannot combine with each other and are unlikely to combine with much else.
• Peg hard. You lead, which is a real advantage: you choose the shape of the count. A 4 is the conventional lead because it makes fifteen only with a ten-card, whereas a 5 offers a fifteen to sixteen different cards.

Playing as dealer

Your job is to be greedy at the discard and careful during the play.

• Feed your own crib. Fives, pairs, cards that make fifteen together, and cards two apart (which a cut can turn into a run) are all worth throwing. A 5 into your own crib is close to two guaranteed points.
• Do not overpay for it. The crib is one hand, and it is only worth about four and a half; wrecking a good hand to load it is a losing trade. The rule of thumb is that you will give up about a point of hand value for a good crib throw and no more.
• Play defensively. You are counting last and you already have the crib, so the play is where you can lose the advantage rather than extend it. Avoid taking the count to 5 or 21 — both invite the sixteen ten-cards.

What a deal is worth

Rough figures for an average deal between two competent players, which are worth knowing because they tell you when a hand is genuinely good rather than merely pleasant:

Those hand figures are higher than the 4.77 average of a random four-card hand, and the gap is not a contradiction — it is the discard. You are dealt six cards and keep the best four, which is taking the best of fifteen draws from that distribution. The size of that gap is a fair measure of how well you are choosing; we computed the underlying numbers in the hand odds and the best keeps.

The pegging figure is the one most players ignore. Three and a half points a deal is thirty-odd points a game — more than a quarter of the way to 121, and entirely available to a player who thinks about the count. See pegging strategy.

Position: counting deals, not points

Strong two-handed play involves thinking in deals remaining rather than points behind. If you are on 95 and your opponent is on 101, the useful question is not "am I six behind" but "how many more deals are there, and how many do I deal?"

With roughly 16 points a deal as dealer and 11.5 as pone, you can estimate whether you are on pace. If you need 26 points in two deals and one of them is yours, that is close to par. If you need 26 in two deals and neither is yours, you are behind and should be taking risks — keeping the hand that might be 16 rather than the one that will be 10.

This flips the usual advice late in a game. When you are ahead you want low-variance hands and safe pegging; when you are behind you want the opposite. Most players never make the switch and play the last deal exactly like the first, which is the last item in the common mistakes.

How it differs from three and four players

Worth knowing, because habits from one carry over badly to another:

• Three-player: five cards each, one card dealt straight to the crib, and each player throws only one. The crib is far less controllable, so discard strategy matters much less — and the deal rotates, so the dealer's advantage is diluted across three players.
• Four-player: five cards each, played in partnerships, one discard each. Your partner's crib is your crib, which changes the discard completely: two of the four throws are friendly. Pegging becomes a co-operative exercise.
• The count order stays the same in all of them — round to the dealer, dealer's crib last — and so does the rule that the game ends the instant somebody reaches 121.

The full rules for both are in the complete rules, and the wider family of games that get called cribbage is in the variants guide.

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