Editing Cribbage (section)

== Some important numbers ==

You cannot score 19 with a hand. No way no how. Thus, if a player scores 0 points, he is said to have (but does not actually) scored "nineteen". (25, 26, and 27 also share this property, but are usually ignored.)

The highest score possible in a single hand is 29 (for the uninitiated: three 5s and a jack, with a 5 whose suit matches the jack as the starter), although 28 is also obviously possible, and far more common (76 combinations, as opposed to 4 for 29). Some cribbage boards are in the shape of the number 29, in a rather excessively optimistic arrangement.

The mean score of a truly random Cribbage hand is theoretically 4.7, but remember, you chose 1 or 2 cards to discard, so this number is meaningful only for comparison--in normal play, the average score of a hand is roughly 8, and the average score for a crib is roughly 4.5.