The non-dealer player starts the play phase by playing a card from their hand face-up and saying its value out loud. The dealer automatically scores 2 points for revealing 'his heels' at the start of the round and will move their peg up 2 spaces on the Cribbage board.Ĭribbage has two phases: the Play phase and Counting the Hands. If the starter card is a Jack of any suit, its considered 'his heels'. Next, draw one card off the top of the deck and place it face up on the deck.The crib is set aside face down and neither player look at it until the end of the round.The cards in the crib will count for the dealer so its generally better for the dealer to play higher ranked cards to the crib and better for the non-dealer to play lower ranked cards to the crib. Each player will play 2 cards from their hand of 6 facedown to 'the crib'.Shuffle the deck once more and deal 6 cards to each player.If cards are tied for rank (low to high: A-K), they draw again until one card is lower.

For PlayingCards.io, it's easier to just shuffle the deck and have each player draw one card from the top and reveal, having the lower card player be the dealer.Normally for game of Cribbage, each player would cut the deck and reveal the bottom card of their deck and the player with the lower card would be dealer. Cribbage is played with a standard 52 card deck and a Cribbage board.Players score points by preventing their opponent from playing cards during the Play phase and through their different card combinations in the Counting the Hands phase.In Cribbage, the goal is to get to 121 points for a long game or 61 points for a short game.

Cribbage play rules