Demo

Crib

The board, the crib and the count. Everything on this page is drawn rather than photographed, so it stays sharp at any size and can say where the pegs are - which is the one thing a picture of a cribbage board cannot do.

The board

Three tracks - red, white, blue - of 120 holes each. A track runs up the outside, round the wide turn at the far end, back down the other side, round the tight turn, and then up the middle to finish. 35, 10, 35, 5, 35: every stretch is a multiple of five, so the grouping runs unbroken from the start hole to 120, curves included.

1020305060708090100110120S121
You - 68Ada - 59Bo - 93

Three-handed, on its end, pegging away from the player. The middle of the board is the last stretch rather than empty space, and all three tracks finish in the same hole - one pin for 121, under the arch of the wide turn.

On its side

The same board through a quarter turn: stretches across, wide turn at the right, start at the left, so it reads the way everything else on the page does.

1020305060708090100110120S121

Two-handed

Red and blue, with white left empty between them. A three-track board keeps all three tracks whatever the table is doing - the unused one is drawn dimmed rather than removed - and putting white in the middle is what keeps the two in play as far apart as the board allows.

1020305060708090100110120S121
You - 68white, not in playAda - 59

Two pegs, not one

The front peg is the score and the back peg is what it was before the last hand, so the size of a score is legible from across the table. A player at the start hole has both pegs on it.

1020305060708090100110120S121

A hand, and the starter

Four cards kept, one turned. The starter is cut before the play and counts towards everyone's hand and the crib, so it is drawn apart from all of them.

Your handfour kept from six
Startercut, turned, counts for everyone
The cribthe dealer's, face down until the show

Pegging

Cards are laid one at a time to a running count that may not pass 31. The count is the only number on the table during the play, so it is set against the cards rather than off in a scoreboard somewhere.

The playcount 22
Adaplayed 4♣ - count 4
Youplayed 6♠ - count 10
Adaplayed 5♥ - count 15
Youplayed 7♦ - count 22
tableAda is two for fifteen

The count, and what it is worth

Every score in cribbage is one of these. Named the way a player says it, because that is what the table will be told.

+2
Fifteen twoany cards totalling 15
+2
A pairtwo of a rank
+3
A run of threeconsecutive ranks
+2
Thirty onethe count exactly
+1
Goopponent cannot play
no
Over 31not a legal card

Whose deal

The crib belongs to the dealer and the deal alternates, so who deals is worth more here than in most games and is marked on the seat.

YouyouPlaying68
AdaWaiting59

Actions

Drawn from the same classes GameBar uses, so what is shown here is what a player will get. On a board these are buttons; here they do nothing.

Peg
Primarythe move the game is waiting for
Go
Defaultavailable, not urgent
Give up
Dangerends something

Board measurements

What the SVG is built from. No coordinate is written down anywhere, so changing one of these moves the whole board and nothing can fall out of line.

Holes per track
120, then the shared 121st
Track
35 out, 10 round, 35 back, 5 round, 35 up the middle
Groups of five
24 per track, curves included
Hole pitch
14
Group gap
5
Lane pitch
30
Tight turn radii
27 / 57 / 87, inner to outer
Wide turn radii
84 / 114 / 144, inner to outer
Game hole
one, shared, on the centre line
Front peg radius
6
Back peg radius
5

Why the turns are built the way they are

All three are measured off a real board, and getting any of them wrong shows immediately.

Turn holes
equal angles, not equal spacing
Consequence
every track gets the same count, inner ones closer
If spaced evenly instead
outer track gains holes, tracks stop lining up
Group gaps in a turn
at both ends, and across the middle if it holds two groups
Consequence
the fives read continuously all the way round
Wide turn radius
set by what it arches over, not chosen
Consequence
it fixes the width of the whole board

Board colours

Wood and brass for the board; red, white and blue for the tracks.

Plank, light#8a5a2bboard face, top of grain
Plank, dark#4a2f18board face, bottom of grain
Hole#1b1109drilled hole
Game hole#c9a227121, and its label
Red track#d13438innermost; always in play
White track#f2ede1middle; three-handed only
Blue track#3272c8outermost; two- and three-handed
Groove, red#8f2226track behind the holes
Groove, white#9c8d72track behind the holes
Groove, blue#1d4478track behind the holes