On the Coffee Table: Dan Barlow

Title: Play Cribbage to Win

Author: Dan Barlow

via Amazon

Few things in the world are more versatile than a deck of 52 playing cards.  You can build things with cards.  You can do magic tricks or tell fortunes.  Cards make for good bookmarks in a pinch.  And, of course, you can use them to play games - thousands of different, enduring, compelling and downright addictive games all from the same deck.  You can play alone.  You can play with groups of variable size.  My basic philosophy of traveling anywhere: as long as I have a good book and a deck of cards, I will never be bored.

I love cribbage.  It's probably my favorite card game.  I don't know when I first learned the rules but I didn't learn to play well until I met my wife 22 years ago.  She plays with muggins (more on that in a bit) which meant I had to clean up the careless mistakes in a hurry.  Over the years since, I'd like to believe I've developed a reasonably sophisticated game.  Cribbage is mostly mathematical - more so than other games - and I'm generally pretty good at math.  Against a phone app, my most frequent opponent, I win a lot more than I lose.

Humans are, of course, more challenging as they are less predictable.  I've recently found an opportunity to test my skills against real people more often.  The Boardroom has started a cribbage league!  We gather monthly.  Last month, my performance definitely left room for improvement.  So, I have revisited Barlow's book, one I first read several years ago.

Before I dive into the specifics, those unfamiliar with the game can learn the basics here.

I am confident in my toss game - the bit where you decide which cards to keep in your hand and which to "toss" to the crib.  That's straight math so figuring out which cards are likely to be most useful to me and least helpful to my opponent is relatively simple.  Computers are brilliant at analyzing such decisions and mine are usually right - or at least not disastrously wrong.  If there's an art to cribbage, it's in the pegging.  Computers are not as good at picking up on the subtleties and are therefore less than satisfying opponents in this regard.  You need real people for decent practice.

Barlow's insights are certainly helpful.  He offers solid strategic advice for each individual card you play from your hand.  There's a lot to remember but I do my best to latch on to a few guiding principles.  The first couple plays are the most important so if I prioritize that for now, I'm hopeful of seeing improvements.

The league is a relaxed one, including both beginners and experienced players.  We don't play with muggins.  That's when you can steal points from your opponent if s/he doesn't see them.  There are some psychological issues to work through, though.  My adrenaline was running like mad last month.  Beer is a decent sedative, though you certainly don't want too much, especially when you still need to drive home afterwards.  Hopefully, that will also get easier as I adapt to the circumstances from month to month.

I will refer back to Barlow, too.  I'll look into other books eventually for a different perspective but his short, 96-page volume packs a lot.  He gets into the endgame also, aka Fourth Street.  He has a whole separate book on the subject.  I'm not even ready to put much thought into that before I master the pegging.