Okay, im just starting, how do you make those decisions/calculations within 3 seconds?

Thank you for this excellent explanation!

I just got a crib flush last night and I almost couldn't believe my eyes. In cribbage, I find flushes to be alluring because they are relatively strong in Poker, but I always remind myself... I'm not playing Poker!

simple

I chose AJ.

Save the As and the 7s 7+8=15

Do you take pegging into account? I am only four minutes in.

Great video. I seen at the 7:02 mark that dealer got to 120 points. I think this could be a rule in my area I live in only. But if you peg 120 you are in the sh*t hole as we call it. And the only way to win is to peg the point to win. Your points in your hand won’t count if the hand is played through and you can’t manage to peg the point.

Love this book!

Sometimes you keep your best counting cards- does your book cover that

Just bought the book on Amazon. Thank you.

To keep things practical, would be interesting to know the top 10 double runs that should be broken up on the dealer side and the top ten on the pone side. Also as mentioned below, one intangible to consider is the pegging value of the hand held....eg., the magic 11 can often result in extra points if retained.

so would this be used mostly in a study situation or do you do all these calculations in real game scenarios

I think you could have gone a step further in the research and compare how many points you'd be losing on average for always keeping a double run. In the example hand you gave, you're only giving up 0.63 points by keeping the double straight, and that's only when you're dealing. So on average that's only a 0.32 point mistake. It'd be interesting to see if that's consistent amongst the hands, or if there are specific ones where you'd be missing out on 2 or 3 points on average.

Pretty sure you are double counting your 5 card flush hands and triple counting your 6 card flush hands with the way your are doing the math. Either way, interesting video.

It’s not too hard to count up the points in the hand, and see that discarding the 6,9 or the 2,7 are both equally attractive options for scoring. I’m seeing 15-4 and a pair for 6 getting rid of the 2, 7 to the pone’s crib, and the same in hand, while also a 2 point bonus to my crib, salting away the 6, 9. I can do that kind of figuring and I’m no math whiz. I guess I’m wondering what would make this a troubling hand. And also what percentage of players do we think are hitting the math hard with expected averages? My guess is approaching zero when looking at casual players, if there are very many of those these days. A minority of local club type of players? (Maybe a vast minority?) Most people who travel to a tournament? Is it worth traveling to a tournament if you aren’t conversant in the stats? How long would it take a normal person to be reasonably conversant with expected averages, and might your time be better invested learning sabermetrics or playing the ponies? Nice videos for people interested in getting better at cribbage, thanks. 😀

We’re both striving at the beginning of the game to either separate ourselves from each other or as the non dealer…limit the separation. Middle of the game strategy is to maximize your 3 hand to 1 hand situations. Obviously at about the 100 ish area you want the 3 hands and obviously the closer you all are to the 121 out, you would rather be the first to count. It’s certainly not cathartic or revolutionary. It’s sort of like me placing one foot in front of the other, calling it a step and writing a book called theory of walking.

To put it simply for those that need it, when you have the crib try and score 16 and over total (pegging, show & crib) and try and keep your opponent under 10. When you don't have the crib try and score 10 and over total ( pegging & show) and try and keep your opponent under 16.

I'm so glad I found your channel.... But, that "if you remember back to math class.." comment cracked me up. I took algebra 4 times..LOL So, I can spit the quadratic formula or even pythagorean theorem. It wasn't a 'I cant do it' thing... its was a 'I dont like school thing.' This was early 80's also. Love what you are doing.

An old friend of mine did 20 years in the can, man oh man he is one helluva card player and when it comes to crib he wins 97.5% of the time. Currently he back incarcerated on a parole violation and isn't allowed to play crib because he used the crib board to hit another inmate over the head with and that is against the rules.

You made the volume low so the old timers can’t hear - give use young bucks a chance at learning strategy and winning lol

So, I like this book…in the abstract. But, I don’t understand its application as a practical matter. There are over 18,000 possible Cribbage hands. How can a human being be expected to learn every “best discard” of 18,000 possibilities? Surely we would not sit down for a serious match with the book and consult the book on every hand? Not disputing the logic or the accuracy of the information, I just don’t know how to cram all of this in my memory…

Curious if there is any cribbage software that helps you learn theory of 26 by playing the computer. Something that gives hints when board position is critical so you can better learn playing offense/defense.

I use this book when I have free time. Deal out a hand decode what the best discard is and then look it up. I keep score to see how well I do. After doing Tis for a few months my game has vastly improved

I will give away 4 points to the crib knowing there are 5 cards that could help me if I get my cut. I gamble it and most of time I do good! as long as your decent on the play in, you wont be sacrificing too much

I've just started looking at your videos and really like your clear explanations, thanks! I would like to watch them in the appropriate order, but are having some problems finding the suggested (chronological?) order. Can I suggest that you add an episode number at the beginning of each episode title 😊

A 5 up your sleeve 😂

Thanks for sharing your computations and nicely explaining your methodology. Here's a couple other factors that you might want to think about for future computations. First, in a game we choose 4 cards from 6, which means that not all 4-card hands are equally likely. For example, 5TJQ is far more common than A38K. (An easy heuristic is: the more points a hand is worth, the more common it is.) In your loop, you could factor this in by weighting each hand by is score. Second, it seems a little strange to average over the dealer and pone. What if some hands really like going first and some hands like going second? Maybe it would be useful to know if there are any patterns for hands that are particularly good for the dealer or non-dealer. Third, (you mentioned it already but) a strategy for hands might be good to simulate and give more accurate values. On average, the dealer + non-dealer score from the play is closer to 5 than 4 (I think it's actually way more). If you don't want a hard-code strategy, you could use strategies that have variable parts like a 'prefered playing order' for each hand, or even some NNs or trees. But as you said, the optimal pegging strategy factors in what your opponent is most likely to have and that requires distilling a lot of information. Finally, maybe this was bait, but you said something about the non-dealer never leading a 5... I can't help myself! There are lots of times the non-dealer should definitely lead a 5 for safety. E.g. 5TJQ, if you lead the 5 and the dealer makes 15 with one of 9 remaining Ts, Js or Qs then you get your points back and avoid a lot of traps. Anyway, thanks for the very nice video.

Nice video. Looks like an interesting way to learn about discard averages. I'm curious to know if the book says much about flushes and how it recommends you use it. I'm also very curious to know how it compares to other tools, like C. Liam Brown's analyser. I suspect for experienced or improving players this book might be a bit of a red-herring since, in a real game, finding the best discard relies on the scores. But very cool to highlight it nonetheless

Your videos are helpful and clarify some strategies. I wonder if there is an easy way to quickly calculate or approximate expected averages when playing ? It’s a lot of mental math otherwise 😢

awesome idea! though it seems really really surprising that the highest incidence of ‘optimal’ strategy winning out is only 75%. assuming relatively decent players voting i would expect that to be much much higher. although the hands shown are ‘tricky’, it doesn’t seem that hard for a good player to pick the best option frequently. did you happen to think about that too at all during your analysis?

A volume-boosted version of this video can be viewed here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d86EZsl2tLTdYpc.html (I'm a slow speaker and recommend viewing at 1.5x speed)

Love the video. Something that would be interesting is the highest and lowest possibilities of your hand. That would help in certain situations, like I need to swing for the fences to go out before my opponent.

Wow keep the double run....mind blowing. lol

My thought is with that hand, it almost doesn't matter where on the board or what the score is. The only factor is whether you are dealer or not. The only time it could possibly matter is if you are opponent and you are both three or fewer points from the end so you hold with the idea you need to peg out before the dealer.

You are correct. it's definitely not a 100% rule. If you hold a 5, 10, J, J, Q, 2, and it is your opponent's crib, you need to look at net total points. To keep your double run, you would have to discard the 5 and 2 to your opponent's crib. Any hand that contains a 5 is guaranteed to have at least 2 points. That means your double runs 8 points are dropped to a net of 6 points. If you instead discard the 10 and 2 or Q and 2, then you keep 8 points, but there is no guarantee that your opponent's crib has points. There are other times, too, but this is a hand I was faced with tonight. Lucky me, the cut was a king, and I had thrown the 10 and 2, resulting in 16 points for me. Alas, neither J matched for the additional point. Good video

I'm sorry but this is useless information. You wanna be the dealer...ok that's never a certain thing. Obviously you wanna be counting first if you're less than 10 out...but you can't just make that stuff happen.

Its complex and hard to get working but I do agree that with the final position you can win the game from, 10 points back from 121 as non dealer and 16 points back as dealer. If you get there then you have a statistical higher chance to win the game, my experience is either situation will give you probably 10-20% higher chance to win. This is always my goal, to end in either of these positions as a dealer or non dealer and it works for me. Also, and maybe its partially due to this, if you start as the dealer you will end up with at least a 30% higher chance to win. Luck has a lot to do with it but if I start as a dealer or get into that final right position on the last hand at all cost I can win more games than just relying on luck.

This theory is hard to understand on paper thanks for the upload

Im sorry but it's not rocket science. You just need cards to make the most points. Strategy doesn't count for a lot in this game. Dealer is luck. The up card is luck. and as a consequence the crib points are luck. The only strategy if knowing the cards to discard. And to a very lesser extent, the order in which you play you cards.

Makes no sense to me.

This is something I'm still trying to get better at. Board position is something I need to work on. Love your stuff!

so what if I am under by one on each ccz?

My gfs family is a big cribbage family. This is going on the Christmas list for them!

Great video! I'm wondering about the best ways to put this information in practice while actually playing the game and recognize these situations when they come up. Are there any noticeable patterns to look out for among the small percentage of hands where it's optimal to break up the double runs? Like certain numbers where it's more common, or a certain amount of potential 15s to make it worth it?

Cribbage, luck of the draw, and fiercely manipulative with your cards,make for one of the best 2 man games ever. IMHO.

This is amazing. Nice job coding too. Hope you are well

Speaking as an amateur who has played 400 games of Cribbage With Grandpa: Skip to 6:00 for the strategy. Everything beforehand is theory that is necessary on the condition that you want to know how the math works. Is it really necessary to know where the par holes are? If I start off as non-dealer and exceed the par hole, should I turn the game into a defensive game? Thanks. Edit: Question added at end

Before I employed the following strategy, I averaged winning 50-52 percent of games. Now I win closer to 60 percent. Do not ever give up fives or tens to your opponents crib. Sometimes tens are unavoidable, but never give them two ten valued cards.

Do you simulate each hand to all possibilities or do each player always play their lowest card?