Five things score, and two of them have a trap in. Get those two right and you'll out-count most people who've been playing for years.
You have four cards, plus the starter — the card cut face-up, which belongs to everybody. So you're always counting five cards. Go through them in the same order every time and you'll stop missing points.
Every combination of cards that adds up to exactly fifteen scores two. Aces are one, face cards are ten. And note the word combination: it isn't just pairs of cards. Three cards can make fifteen. So can four, or all five.
This is where beginners leak points. A hand of 5 5 5 J contains four different ways to make fifteen with the jack (one per five), plus the three fives together making fifteen on their own. That's five fifteens — ten points — before you've counted a single pair.
Every pair of matching ranks scores two. Which means three of a kind isn't "three points", it's six — because three cards contain three different pairs. And four of a kind is twelve, because four cards contain six pairs. Count the pairs, not the cards.
Three or more consecutive ranks score one point per card. A run of three scores three, a run of five scores five. Suits are irrelevant, and aces are always low — there's no king-ace-two.
And here's the first trap. If a rank in your run is duplicated, the run scores again. Hold 4 5 5 6 and you don't have a run of three — you have two runs of three (4-5-6 using the first five, and 4-5-6 using the second), which is six points. That's a "double run". Three fives with a four and a six gives you a triple run: nine points. Two fours and two fives with a six gives you a double-double: twelve.
All four cards in your hand the same suit scores four. If the starter matches too, that's five.
And here's the second trap, the one that catches software as well as people: in the crib, a four-card flush scores nothing at all. The crib flush must be all five cards. Four matching suits in the crib is worth exactly zero, and if you don't know that rule you will over-count the dealer's crib for the rest of your life.
If you hold the jack of the same suit as the starter, that's one point. Just one, and it's easy to forget.
Don't confuse it with his heels (also called his nibs): that's when the starter itself is a jack, which scores two to the dealer, immediately at the cut. Different score, different moment, different player.
| Hand + starter | Score | How |
|---|---|---|
| 5 5 5 J + 5 (matching the jack's suit) | 29 | The best hand in cribbage. Fifteens: 16. Pairs (four fives = six pairs): 12. Nobs: 1. |
| 4 5 5 6 + 9 | 14 | Double run: 6. Pair of fives: 2. Fifteens (4-5-6 twice, and 9-6): 6. |
| 4 5 5 5 + 6 | 23 | Triple run: 9. Three fives (three pairs): 6. Fifteens: 8 — the three 4-5-6s and the three fives making fifteen together. |
| A 2 3 4 + 5 | 7 | Run of five: 5. One fifteen (all five cards): 2. Nothing else. |
| 2 4 6 8 + K | 0 | Nothing. No fifteen, no pair, no run. Cribbage players call this a "nineteen" — because 19 is impossible to score, it's the standing joke for a worthless hand. |
You cannot score 19, 25, 26 or 27 in cribbage. There is no combination of five cards that produces them. Which is why "I've got a nineteen" is how a cribbage player tells you they have nothing at all — and why, if someone claims a 25, they've miscounted.
The best way to learn this is to have your counting checked, hand after hand, until it stops being work. The cribbage table here breaks out every hand — fifteens, pairs, runs, flush, nobs — so you can count it yourself first and see instantly where you went wrong. That's the whole reason it's built that way.