Of Cribbage and Life

So often in life, a sequence of events that we may (or may not) have personal control over can affect us in many different ways.  We may have an accident, be injured, and can't work for several weeks.  We can save money every paycheck until we have enough for a Las Vegas vacation ... win a bunch on the slot machines ... and then lose it all on the roulette wheel.  Cribbage can be the same way. 

Some of my early childhood memories involve watching my New Hampshire grandparents Jennie and Clarence Robinson playing cribbage at their kitchen table on Cascade Hill. The cribbage board was always sitting on her table along with a deck of cards.  When they spent their summers at the camp on Maidstone Lake, in Vermont that old cribbage board was right there with them.

Nana and Gramps played cribbage every day, sometimes several games a day after Gramps retired from the paper mill.  If one played particularly well, the other would sometimes get a little angry if there was a little too much bragging taking place at the table!  On occasion, they would stop talking to each other all together, pegging and scoring in silence until the guilty party apologized!

For those who may not know, cribbage is a card game that dates back to the 1600s and was invented by the English poet Sir John Suckling.  It is a game for two, three, or four players with a distinctive method of scoring points and keeping score using a wooden board with holes drilled in it.  Wooden pegs are used to mark each player's position on the board.  The first player to score 121 points wins the game.

The game is played using four phases per hand: dealing, pegging, scoring, and the crib.  After dealing six cards per player, each  player takes two cards from his hand and places them face-down to make the crib.  During the pegging phase, each player takes turns laying down a card from his hand and declaring the running total of the cards laid down.  Points are "pegged" whenever the total hits an exact number such as 15 or 31.  If a pair of cards or three consecutively numbered cards are played in succession points are also pegged.  Experienced cribbage players will try to save certain cards in their hand to facilitate aggressive pegging.

Once all the cards have been played, the players score their hand and then peg the number of points counted.  Finally, the crib is scored by whoever dealt the hand.  The deck is passed to the other player who deals the next hand.

My Nana was one of those aggressive serious-as-a-heart-attack cribbage players, who rarely failed to peg points on every hand.  Just like in life, it comes down to how well you do the little things that can make a tremendous difference in the final outcome!

Mindy and I were playing cribbage the other day.  We pegged fairly evenly until the second half of the game when I pulled ahead.  She scored a couple of nice hands and caught up to me.  I was two points away from the win - I had the red pegs and Mindy had the green.  She dealt the hand, so I would be counting points first unless I "pegged out" before the hand was finished!  With a 6-7-8-J hand I was guaranteed a minimum five points at the count.  Of course, it would be rude and un-sportsmanlike to declare victory at that point!

Mindy needed 11 points to win.  She said something to the effect that she was "guaranteed to lose" and "why bother playing the hand".  I reminded her of my Nana and how she would have reacted if she were in that position.  Nana was a tea-totaling Methodist who rarely drank ... but this would have been one of those "here ... hold my beer and watch me do this" moments for sure!

I led with the seven of spades.  Mindy followed with the seven of clubs (14) for two points.

I then played the Eight of Hearts (22) and she played the Six of Hearts (28) for three points.  She also pegged one point for the "go" at 28.  She pegged six of the 11 that she needed ... but I wasn't worried!

I led the Jack and she countered with the Eight of Clubs (18).  I played my final card, the Six of Spades to bring us to a 24 count.  The look on her face made me realize that I had been "had" ...

She finished with the Seven of Hearts (31) pegging three for her second 6-7-8 run of the hand and two more for the 31!  Mindy pegged 11 points while I was shut out!  Needless to say she was quite proud of herself.  

Me, I handled the loss just as my Grandfather would have ... I kept my mouth shut!