The crib is yours

Cribbage Solitaire

Thirteen cards a deal, four deals, the whole pack used exactly once. Two hands and a crib all score against the same starter — and because there is no opponent, the crib is yours as well.

Four deals of thirteen
Two hands and a crib
One shared starter
101 to beat

Deal1/4

Total0

Deal score-

Crib0/4

Deck left39

0/121

Choose two cards from Hand 1 to send to the crib.

Starter

Hand 1

Hand 2

Crib

Score

No pegging, no opponent

Cribbage Solitaire rules

There is no pegging and no opponent. The whole game is the discard, and then the count.

Cribbage Solitaire setup and rules
A deal
Cards	Thirteen: two hands of six, plus a starter.
Hand 2	Face down until Hand 1 has discarded.
The starter	Face down until both hands have discarded.
Discarding
From each hand	Choose any two cards; they go to the crib.
The crib	Four cards, and it scores for you like a third hand.
After discards	Two hands of four, a crib of four, one starter.
The show
Scoring	Each hand and the crib score their four cards plus the starter.
Deal total	Hand 1 + Hand 2 + crib, plus two if the starter is a jack.
The game	Four deals use all fifty-two cards. Beat 101 to win.

Six cards, choose two

How to play Cribbage Solitaire

Each deal hands you six cards, face up, and asks for two of them. Those two go face down to the crib. Then a second hand of six appears — hidden until now — and gives up two more. That fills the crib to four, and the starter is turned.

All three sets of four then count against that one starter, and the deal total is the sum. Do it four times and you have used the entire deck: four deals of thirteen is fifty-two.

Thirteen cards, three scoring piles, one starter. The crib is the part that surprises cribbage players. In the two-handed game it belongs to the dealer, so half your discards feed an opponent. Here nobody else is at the table: a card sent to the crib is still counting for you. Discarding is not about what to throw away, only about which of your own three piles a card scores best in.

The count

What each combination is worth

Every hand and the crib are scored as four cards plus the starter — five cards each time, and every combination inside those five counts.

Cribbage Solitaire scoring
Combination	Points	Detail
Fifteen	2	Any combination of cards, of any size, whose values total fifteen. Ace counts 1; jack, queen and king each count 10.
Pair	2	Each pair of same-rank cards. Three of a kind makes three pairs for 6; four of a kind makes six pairs for 12.
Run	1 a card	Three or more consecutive ranks. A duplicated rank multiplies the run, so a run of three with a pair in it scores 6.
Flush in hand	4 or 5	All four hand cards of one suit scores 4; five if the starter matches too.
Flush in crib	5 only	The crib pays only for all five cards in suit. A four-card crib flush scores nothing.
Nobs	1	A jack in the hand or crib whose suit matches the starter.
Heels	2	The starter itself is a jack. Added once to the deal, whatever the hands hold.

The court cards lead a double life. For fifteens a jack, queen and king are each worth ten, so they pair with a five. For runs they are ranks eleven, twelve and thirteen, so jack-queen-king is a run and queen-king-ace is not.

Does it score?

What scores and what does not

Scoring cases in Cribbage Solitaire
The cards	Verdict	Why
A 9 and a 6 among the five cards	Scores	Two for fifteen. Size does not matter — three or four cards adding to fifteen score just the same.
A jack, a queen and a king together	Scores	Three for a run. For runs the court cards are ranks 11, 12 and 13.
A queen, a king and an ace together	No score	The ace is rank 1. Runs never wrap round from king back to ace.
Three sevens	Scores	Six. Three of a kind is counted as three separate pairs, not as one triple.
Four hand cards in one suit, starter a different suit	Scores	Four for the flush, and five if the starter had matched.
Four crib cards in one suit, starter a different suit	No score	Nothing. The crib pays a flush only when all five cards match, and then it pays five.
The starter turns out to be a jack	Scores	Two for his heels, added to the deal total regardless of what you kept.

Worth knowing

The fourth starter is not a secret

One deck is shuffled once and cut into four packets of thirteen. Every card of a finished deal is on show, so by the time you are discarding from Hand 2 you have seen every earlier deal in full plus the twelve cards in front of you. The starter is one of whatever is left.

In deal one that leaves forty possibilities. In deal four it leaves exactly one. If you have been paying attention, the last starter of the game is not a gamble at all — you can name it before it turns, and discard as though it were already face up.

The uncertainty drains at a fixed rate. Thirteen cards a deal out of fifty-two means the pool of possible starters falls 40, 27, 14, 1. Deal one is close to a blind guess; deal four is arithmetic. Most players never notice, which is why the last deal is where a careful game pulls away from a casual one.

Discarding well

Cribbage Solitaire strategy

Keep fives and the cards that go with them. A five makes fifteen with any of the sixteen ten-count cards, which is more partners than any other rank gets.

Do not defend the crib. It is yours, so the only question is whether two cards score more sitting beside your kept four or beside the other hand's discards.

Watch the crib's flush rule. Four suited cards are worth four in a hand and nothing at all in the crib, so a suited pair is usually better kept than sent.

Spend your knowledge in the second hand. Hand 1's discard is made half blind; Hand 2's is made with twelve cards showing and, by the later deals, a very short list of possible starters.

Aim for about twenty-five a deal. Beating 101 over four deals means roughly eight from each of the two hands and the crib, every time — comfortable in one container, harder in all three.

Points left behind

Where points go missing

Throwing junk to the crib out of habit

In two-handed cribbage the crib alternates, so half the time a discard is a gift to your opponent and you throw away rubbish. Here every crib is yours. A discard never loses a point to anyone — it only moves the point from one of your scoring piles to another. The instinct to discard defensively costs you real score.

Breaking up fives

Sixteen of the fifty-two cards count ten: the tens, jacks, queens and kings. That gives every five sixteen partners for a fifteen, more than any other rank has. Splitting a pair of fives, or discarding one to keep a marginal run, usually costs more than the shape you were protecting.

Discarding from Hand 2 as if you still knew nothing

By the time Hand 2 is face up you can see its six cards, the four Hand 1 kept, and how many cards have already gone in earlier deals. Hand 1's discard is a genuine guess; Hand 2's is much better informed, and playing them the same way wastes the difference.

Beating 101

Is Cribbage Solitaire winnable?

The game always finishes: four deals are dealt whatever you do, and every deal scores something. What is in doubt is the total. Falling short of 101 is the loss, and it happens often enough that the benchmark means something.

Because all three scoring piles share one starter, a good starter lifts the whole deal at once and a poor one flattens it. That is the luck. The skill is in the four discards, and across four deals it is worth a good deal more than the swing from any single turn-up.

The 121 mark on the track is the length of a real cribbage board rather than a second win condition. Reaching it takes about thirty a deal, and needs the cards to help.

This version

Four deals, three hands, one deck

One deck, shuffled once and dealt as four packets of thirteen — the whole pack, exactly once.
Each deal: two hands of six and a face-down starter.
Hand 2 stays hidden until Hand 1 has sent two cards to the crib.
The crib fills to four and scores for you, with the stricter five-card-only flush rule.
Fifteens, pairs, runs, flushes, nobs and heels are counted. There is no pegging phase.
Beating 101 across the four deals is the win; the track shows progress towards 121.

Undo steps back through the discards, and hint suggests a discard for the active hand. Also published as Cribbage Patience or Solitaire Cribbage; other versions play a single deal or add the pegging count.

The scored games

Cribbage among the scored games

Most games here end when the board is cleared. A few end on a fixed number of rounds and hand you a number instead, and those are judged differently.

Cribbage compared with Bowling, Las Vegas, and Memory
Game	What ends it	The unit of score	The target
Cribbage	Four deals, the whole deck	Points for fifteens, pairs, runs and flushes	101, with 121 as the full board
Bowling	Ten frames	Pins, with strike and spare bonuses	300 in theory, far less in practice
Las Vegas	The stock runs out, one pass	Dollars: minus $52 to start, $5 a foundation card	$0 to break even, $208 for a full win
Memory	The board is cleared	Turns and misses, counted	As few as possible; the board always clears

Bowling Solitaire is the closest relative: another card game wearing a borrowed scoring system, played out over a fixed number of rounds rather than until the cards run out.

Explore

More solitaire games

Other games judged by a number rather than by a cleared board.