How Do You Keep Score on a Cribbage Board?

Use two pegs for each player and move only one when recording a new score. The leading peg marks your current total; the trailing peg preserves your previous total. When you score again, take the trailing peg past the leading one to the new total. This guide explains that scorekeeping movement, rather than every card combination that earns points.

Find your route before the first deal

Choose a pair of matching pegs and identify your scoring track, starting positions, direction of travel, and finishing hole. Follow the board’s own markings or instructions, especially if its shape is unusual. Holes set aside to record games won are not extra points along the playing route.

Boards do not all use the same layout. Masters of Games describes a traditional short board with two thirty-hole rows for each player. A full 121-point game goes up and back twice before finishing. By contrast, the American Cribbage Congress tournament rules require long boards with sixty holes up and sixty down.

On a short board, a hole’s location alone may not tell you whether you are on the first or second circuit. Keep track of the circuit as well as the hole. On either design, count forward along your route, not across into another player’s track.

What do the two pegs show?

The front peg means the one farther along your scoring route, not necessarily the one nearest the top of the table. The rear peg is the one behind it on that route.

Imagine your pegs stand at 14 and 17. Your total is 17, and the last recorded increase was three points. The score is not 31: you do not add the two peg positions together.

That remaining peg is useful evidence of where you started your latest move. Leave it in place until it becomes the peg you need for your next score. Moving both pegs at once makes a mistaken count harder to reconstruct.

Move the rear peg, but count from the front

The ACC’s beginner guide explains the alternating, leapfrog movement. For your first score, place one peg at that total while the other remains at the start. For later scores:

1. State the points you earned.
2. Note the current total shown by your front peg.
3. Pick up your rear peg, leaving the front peg where it is.
4. Count the earned points forward from the front peg and place the moving peg in the destination hole.

Do not count the occupied front hole as the first point. The next hole is one point farther on. The moved peg becomes your new front peg, and the peg you left behind becomes the rear one.

Practice with a short score sequence

Return to the fictional starting positions of 14 and 17. Suppose you earn four points. Pick up the peg at 14, count 18, 19, 20, 21 from the peg at 17, and place the moving peg at 21. Your pegs now show 17 and 21.

Next, suppose you earn two points. Move the peg at 17 past the one at 21 to 23. Now your pegs show 21 and 23. You have added six points overall, taking your total from 17 to 23.

If your next hand scores zero, leave both pegs alone. ACC rule 8.2 specifically says not to touch the pegs for a zero hand or crib.

Try this sequence before dealing cards. It separates learning the board from learning how to count a hand.

Keep the card count separate from the game score

During card play, players announce a running card-value count that cannot exceed 31. That is different from the points recorded on the board. Bicycle’s cribbage rules explain both the running count and scoring combinations.

For example, making the card count exactly 15 earns two points. You advance your peg by two, not fifteen. When a new card-count sequence begins at zero, your accumulated board score stays where it is.

After the cards have been played, the nondealer counts and records their hand, followed by the dealer’s hand and then the dealer’s crib. The ACC beginner guide sets out that order. Keep the same peg-moving method for these scores.

Finish at the agreed target

For the standard 121-point game, reaching or passing 121 wins; an exact finishing count is unnecessary. Masters of Games’ rules also note that the game ends as soon as a player reaches the target, even during card play. Do not give the other player an extra turn to catch up.

Identify the finishing hole before you approach it. Under ACC terminology, hole 120 is still one point short and hole 121 is the game hole. If a move looks wrong, stop and compare the previous total, points announced, and destination before moving anything else. In organized play, use the event’s rules and judges for corrections rather than inventing a remedy.