CHECK A HAND

Cribbage hand calculator

Choose four cards and the starter. See how the score is built, then practice counting it yourself.

Choose your four hand cards and the starter, then calculate.

Your practice notebook

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Count every combination

For hand counting, Aces are 1, number cards use their face value, and Jacks, Queens and Kings are 10. Runs use rank order A–2–…–Q–K, with no wraparound.

Fifteens: each card combination totaling 15 earns 2 points.
Pairs: each pair of equal ranks earns 2; three of a kind earns 6 and four of a kind earns 12.
Runs: count each longest run of at least three cards. Duplicate ranks can create multiple runs; shorter contained runs do not score again.
Flush: all four original hand cards in the same suit earn 4, or 5 if the starter matches. A crib only earns a flush when all five cards match.
Nobs: a Jack in the original four cards matching the starter’s suit earns 1. A starter Jack’s heels are scored separately during the game and excluded here.

A verified 29-point example

Hand: 5♣ 5♦ 5♥ J♣. Starter: 5♠. Eight fifteens earn 16 points, six pairs earn 12, and J♣ does not match the starter: 28 points. Change J♣ to J♠ to add nobs for 29. No runs or flush.

Rules checked against the American Cribbage Congress 2025 rulebook, sections 1.6–1.7. This is hand counting practice, not a full game, pegging scorer or official tournament aid.

Build a small practice habit

Try five hands before game night. Use category feedback to spot missed fifteens or multiplied runs, then revisit the missed-hand queue. Daily five changes at midnight UTC and resumes first attempts after a reload. Practice is unlimited; revealing an answer counts as a miss. Stats record the first check of each dealt hand, not repeated guesses.

Are hands selected like a real player’s discards?

No. Hands are sampled from a shuffled 52-card deck with hand/crib mode assigned randomly. They are not optimal retained hands or a representative strategy distribution. Daily deals are deterministic practice prompts, not a secure competition.