One evening when family friends invited us over to grill, Michael and I decided to play a quick game of cribbage on the deck. I didn't realize what cribbage had become until we changed environments, going to live with my parents for several weeks that summer. The rest of the week might be filled with anxiety, but Friday cribbage was our time to be playful, to flirt, to recapture the feeling of our early dating days and set the many small tensions of daily life aside. In search of distraction, we headed to our small cement patio and decided to try a game Michael had learned in college: cribbage. Bleary from too much screen time and anxious about the escalating pandemic, all I wanted was to relax into our usual Friday happy hour routine.īut it was suddenly clear that our relationship had entered new territory, one where playful spontaneity would be harder to come by. Then in March of 2020 we were both sent home from work, and suddenly our lives were confined to 640 square feet.Īfter the first full week of working from home, we emerged stiffly from our makeshift desks. We expected living together to be a change, but not a huge one we'd make coffee together in the mornings and maybe see each other for dinner, but otherwise maintain our busy schedules. Our first year of dating was typical of early-thirty-somethings, a happy whirlwind of weekend day trips and long, tipsy evenings at our favorite bars. When my partner Michael and I moved in together in February 2020, we hadn't had time for many games, cards or otherwise. Make sure to total up all of your points and move your pegs on the cribbage board accordingly before you play another round.Sara Barbour is the Senior Production Manager for NPM Creative. There is an optional rule called 'muggins' that allows an opposing player to claim any points that his opponent did not claim from his own hand. Indeed, this is how the best cribbage players play.

1 point for a jack in the same suit as the starterĪll of these hands can be combined to score multiple points.

5 points with a flush of five cards, which can include the crib and the starter.

4 points for four cards of the same suit - not including the starter and the crib.

1 point for every card in a run (sequence).

12 points for each hand of four-of-a-kind.

2 points for any combination of cards totaling 15.

The dealer then counts the cards in his crib.

The non-dealing player counts first, followed by the dealer. After the initial counting portion of the game, players score additional points by tallying the cards in their hands as well as the crib.

Cribbage rules of play