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Dan Barlow:

I go for it. It's possible he'll have a cut for a huge crib if I toss 7-8, but it's certain that I have a cut for a huge hand, one that could have me dealing on Fourth Street while he is scrambling to avoid a skunk. If he gets a 24 crib, well, chances are he'd have had twelve if I'd tossed 8-Q. Either way, I'm still in it. And hey, it's only the first game!

DeLynn Colvert:

Maybe I'm too aggressive, but I'm going to keep 5-5-Q-Q and go for one of the sixteen cuts (over of the deck) that give me a good run at position on Fourth Street. Dealer is -3, so that gives me some margin for error in making a dangerous toss.

George Rasmussen:

This pone likes hole 75 with dealer at 66*. Play safe and discard 8-Q, the two cards with the lowest average in the crib. When playing defensively, make the safest choice. 7-Q has a higher average to crib and the seven is the key connector among the middle cards. At this location on board, you cannot afford a large crib. Give the dealer an average hand and a small crib and you improve your chances of winning. Only the cut of the 5 (if you retain 5-5-Q-Q) puts you into the critical zone on Fourth Street. It's also important to remember that dealer's most frequent discard is the 7-8. 6-7, 6-9 and 8-9 are also among the ten most frequent discards to dealer crib. How do those work with your 7-8?

Michael Schell:

This is a classic bold vs. safe positional discarding choice as pone, so it's time to do a cost/gain analysis. Most of the time when I do one of these, it's on Fourth Street. In this case neither player is in direct range of home, but my opponent is within three counts of the skunk line. This matters since, being a qualifying round game, I'll get three points for a skunk compared to two points for a normal win.

When I calculate the gain in keeping 5-5-Q-Q I'm going to look at how it enhances my chances of getting into position on Fourth Street. That means getting to 96 points or better. The significance of reaching 96 is that I'll then be a favorite to win on the front end (i.e., with my next three counts). This will give me a good shot at a skunk provided my opponent's cards falter a little (he starts this deal right at the skunk positional hole, 25 points back of the skunk line). It also would make me a favorite to win in the event that dealer's cards get hot. He starts this deal -4 to the Third Street positional hole, so my defensive pad is not insurmountable.

If I cut a 5 or Q (a 4 in 46 shot), I'll get to the Fourth Street positional hole easily. If I cut a 10, J or K (12 in 46), I'll be five holes short — close enough to get into position or close to it with a little pegging. I'll guess that keeping 5-5-Q-Q gives me about a 14% chance of getting into Fourth Street position by the end of the deal.

Now to look at the alternative of keeping 5-5-7-Q. This gets fourteen points on a 5 cut and twelve on a 6 or Q cut, but neither gets me close enough to 96 to have significant changes of reaching that hole this hand. So the gain is entirely on defense. Since dealer is an underdog to get into Fourth Street position with his three counts, preserving my winning chances on the back end (i.e., through my opponent's failure to get out in time) has a great deal of value.

So what is the defensive gain in keeping 5-5-7-Q? It doesn't peg any safer than 5-5-Q-Q — in fact it's probably more dangerous, since the ranks are distributed 3/1 instead of 2/2. For example, leading from 5-5-7-Q is a tricky proposition. If you make the obvious choice of the Q, you'll be utterly trapped on a 6 reply. The alternative is to lead the 7, which has seven immediate losers and can also give up lots of pegs against mid-cards. With 5-5-Q-Q you can just lead a Q and probably have an easy time of it. I'm going to guess that 5-5-Q-Q is ¼ point safer as a pegging hand than 5-5-7-Q. Now to the crib. Normally 7-8 gives up 7.6 points in opponent's crib compared to 8-Q at 4.3 points. But if I toss 7-8 I'm leaving no helper cards behind in my hand while if I toss 8-Q I'm leaving four helper cards behind that cannot be cut or tossed by dealer. This makes 8-Q about ¼ point safer than usual relative to 7-8. This offsets the difference in pegging risk, so I'll say the net defensive difference between the two tosses is 7.6 minus 4.3, or 3.3 points.

Keep  Toss    Average   hand Opponent's crib:    Expected    average   Static    Delta   Dynamic  5-5-7-Q     8-Q 8.78 4.31 -0.38 3.93 4.85 5-5-Q-Q 7-8 13.83 7.63 -0.10 7.53 6.30

Keep  Toss      Pegging (Schempp):     Pegging (Mueller): Net (pone/dealer) Net (pone/dealer) 5-5-7-Q     8-Q -2.0 (2.2/4.2) -1.2 (1.5/2.7) 5-5-Q-Q 7-8 -1.5 (2.0/3.5) -1.1 (1.7/2.8)

How much does it cost me to give dealer an extra 3.3 points? On Fourth Street my rule of thumb is that each extra point I give up costs 7% off my back-end chances assuming dealer is starting out close to the positional hole. On Third Street the game has longer to go, so a one-point variance has less impact on my winning chances. But then so does the impact of scoring more points on my own front-end chances. I figure the dropoff is about the same either way, so I'll still use the 7% per point guideline for comparison. I do tweak this, though, for dealer being four holes behind the positional hole, since the positional hole represents a "sweet spot" where a one-point variance will have the highest impact. I'll guess that 3.3 points translates into a 20% cost to my back-end chances at this score.

So the aggressive play adds roughly 14% to my front-end chances, but subtracts roughly 20% from my back-end chances. If skunks didn't count, the decision would be clear: toss 8-Q and play defense. But skunks do count, and my only real chance to get one is to play aggressively, hope to get into position, and hope that my opponent's cards falter a bit down the stretch (since at 66* he is already a slight favorite to reach 91 on his three counts). Because a skunk adds only one game point of value to my scorecard, whereas losing the game costs me two game points, the aggressive play must increase my skunk chances by at least twice as much as it decreases my overall winning chances to be worthwhile. Tossing 7-8 decreases my winning chances by about 6%, so the question is, do my chances of winning a skunk go up by 12% or more keeping 5-5-Q-Q? I'm inclined to think they don't, mainly because by giving my opponent three extra points I'm effectively moving him from 66* to 69*, from which he needs only 22 points in three counts to cross the line. Throw in the fact that one of my favorable cuts is a 5, which usually works out well for dealer, and I'd say that getting a skunk is a most unlikely scenario.

Bottom line: if I was desperate for a skunk, I'd keep 5-5-Q-Q without thinking about it too much. But since it's the first game of the tournament, a little more discretion is called for, and that means tossing the safe 8-Q.

Phyllis Schmidt:

7-8. I go for it, hoping to peg a few and get into position for the next deal.

Peter Setian:

I would make the conservative discard of 8-Q. Both your and the dealer's position on the board dictate this. Unless you match the cut for a twenty-point hand, a routine cut for sixteen points will still leave you well short of a good dealing position next hand, and the dealer's current position is likely to leave him or her short of a "receiving" position next hand. If either player had six more points, I'd "go for it" and toss 7-8.

HALSCRIB:

7-8 is certainly a lot more dangerous in opponent's crib than 8-Q, but the amount of offensive equity you give away by making the safe toss is enormous:

Keep	Toss		Offensive value	Average   hand	Opponent's  crib	Expected   average	Average pegging:     Net (Pone/Dealer)
5-5-7-Q	8-Q		6.58	8.78	3.72	5.06	-1.17 (1.52/2.70)
5-5-Q-Q	7-8		8.30	13.83	7.25	6.58	-1.09 (1.72/2.80)

The safe toss costs you 5 points of offense and saves only 3 points on defense. I don't see that this board position dictates swinging the balance that much toward defense, especially when you add in the skunk potential if you keep the points and get a favorable cut. I'm keeping 5-5-Q-Q.

Panelists

Dan Barlow won the 1980 National Open Cribbage Tournament, and made the 1985 All American Cribbage Team. His cribbage strategy articles appeared in Cribbage World for many years, and can be seen on the ACC Web site. He also provides strategy tips at MSN Gaming Zone. He has written seven books on cribbage, two of which have been glowingly reviewed in Games Magazine. All, including his latest book Winning Cribbage Tips, are available at The Cribbage Bookstore.

HALSCRIB is widely regarded as the world's strongest computer cribbage player. Its opinion was solicited using a special analysis version of the program. Since HALSCRIB only speaks binary, its thoughts have been translated into English by Michael Schell and its creator, Hal Mueller, a retired mathematics professor and eight-time ACC tournament winner. For more information, see the HALSCRIB home page.