The Winter 2023 Season of Competitive Cribbage is Live!
The Autumn 2022 season has closed, and all stats and final top finishers recorded. Can you feel that chill in the air (apologies to our friends in the southern hemisphere)? I definitely can, and with it the Winter 2023 Season of Competitive Cribbage is here! This new season is just a little longer than usual at 112 days. Please also read through this post for some important news about a new upcoming version of Cribbage Pro.
Autumn 2022 was a shorter season (77 days), for mostly logistical reasons, with a few less players as well, which tends to happen this time of year as everyone is busy with so many things. In some ways it was more competitive in a tighter time frame, well at the same time a handful fewer participants is one less person to win against and makes some room for others to join the list. At the same time, I know this also meant having to wait a little longer to find a match. Please continue to spread the word about Competitive Cribbage with your cribbage playing friends. Or, better yet, help a friend learn the great game of cribbage and join us here! I humbly suggest that Cribbage Pro is a great tool to teach the game.
The Top 50 has quite a few players new in the mix. I love seeing new players come in and make a run for it! Thank you to all for participating and bringing your friends! Thank you also to everyone who participated at every level, even if you didn't make the final Top 50.
In 1st place for Autumn 2022, we have "kb92129" (from sunny San Diego perhaps??), up from 19th last season. Impressive. 2nd place is "TC2" '(3rd last season, and someone we have all seen around these parts before). In 3rd we have "Dhrun", who was in 11th last season. Other interesting movements in the Top 50 included "ernie313" who moved up 15 places to be 6th (and was several places higher earlier), "MondoMan" up 35 to 7th place, "hillchem" finishing in 11th up 36 places! A hearty Congratulations to you all!!
Everyone who finished the season in the Top 50 ("Recent" list), has been awarded both a special in-game "board peg" as well as Cribbage Pro Gold that can be used in the Cribbage Pro Contests system and then redeemed for cash (awards must be used at least once in a Contest to be cashed out to USDC, see the full terms and conditions for details). The Gold awards do expire, so use them or lose them! If you are awarded Gold, and are not sure what it is good for (or how to access the Contests system), read through the links above or email us any time if you have questions. On iOS you will need the "Cribbage Pro Contests" version of the app, and on Android you need to install the game using the Amazon Appstore. It is super easy to do, so don't let that app install process get in the way of some good cribbage fun! The Cribbage Pro Gold awards are as follows (not cumulative):
- 4 Gold for Top 50
- 7 Gold for Top 25
- 10 Gold for Top 10
- 20 Gold for 3rd Place
- 30 Gold for 2nd Place
- 50 Gold for 1st Place
The top finisher is awarded the "crown" board peg, and all others in the Top 50 are awarded a "star" board peg. These pegs are shown to everyone when playing in online multiplayer games, and they are permanent, so if you see your opponent has one of them you can know that they have earned it by finishing in the Top 50 in competitive play.
Remember: Complete 10 matches per week! See the FAQ for details.
Here was the final Top 50 for Autumn 2022:
| 1 | kb92129 | 26 | tomato777 |
| 2 | TC2 | 27 | seachica |
| 3 | Dhrun | 28 | tassie08 |
| 4 | nob4one | 29 | 236Postie |
| 5 | iPeg | 30 | jjonell |
| 6 | ernie313 | 31 | enaud58 |
| 7 | MondoMan | 32 | 0ffpiste |
| 8 | Mrpadre | 33 | TheBull82 |
| 9 | scoot1234 | 34 | Rex254 |
| 10 | dkatz1877 | 35 | wintea1 |
| 11 | hillchem | 36 | rattle15 |
| 12 | mailliw | 37 | duke62 |
| 13 | Br1Guy | 38 | Domerzag |
| 14 | Paxter | 39 | gsosin |
| 15 | Bass2K9 | 40 | SH00TER |
| 16 | Yompopo | 41 | TrumpetJ |
| 17 | Warpegs | 42 | Roget |
| 18 | 31four14 | 43 | lbolt58 |
| 19 | brettniko | 44 | Swodis |
| 20 | dronergal | 45 | gtgplayer |
| 21 | 4KA | 46 | 808HWK |
| 22 | IAMFAST | 47 | pscohen |
| 23 | BigD4Life | 48 | boltsfan9 |
| 24 | yank29 | 49 | vhray |
| 25 | PalmerR | 50 | ST13 |
Thanks - had a fun season!
ReplyDeleteI am a newbie...but love it!!!
ReplyDeleteI saw a bug, when I had the hand 33369 the computer gave me 12 points both times instead of 16. I think it is worth checking. ✌️
ReplyDeleteHi, I've never seen the gane score anything incorrectly before, and running that hand through our testing comes out correctly (as does the tool which uses the same scoring system online here https://www.cribbagepro.net/cribbage-scorer.html). If you ever see anything that looks incorrect, please take a screenshot and send it to us for review at support@FullerSystems.com
DeleteMost likely it was 33699 that you saw. 12 points
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIf they quit, the end of the game is instant. I think what you are talking about is that situation where a disconnect happens, and it could be as simple as the opponent literally turning off their device, if it was intentional, or just a legitimate accident. It is super hard to know, and balance a reasonable penalty that can account for those accidental situations as well. That said, there is a penalty today for this and increasing it is not out of the question.
DeleteLast week, I had a 29 hand...the first time ever. I can't imagine it happens very often. How about having a 28-29 wall of fame where everyone who gets a 28 or 29 gets a mention...
ReplyDeleteBeware of Gotupegged player. Poor sportsmanship player. Whenever this player is assured of losing he takes the full time plus timeouts. We have no rating system in this format and I grow tired of poor sportsmanship being permitted so I'm calling out this 3 star rated player. It's obvious you are a good player, but a bad opponent to play. 1/3 of your ratings are for poor sportsmanship. It shows. I woul like players like this looked at for banning from play.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever see anything inappropriate in the game, please take a screenshot and send it to us for review. We can and do ban players for inappropriate conduct and that includes intentional abuse of the system in any way.
DeleteMe thinks me smells something foul. On Saturday at 5:25 while playing jinks1 (me thinks), the opening cut produced a pair of queens. The re-cut produced another pair of the ladies. A third cut finally produced non equal cards, though 1 was a queen yet again. 5 out of 6 but cards were queens? Harder than flipping 6 heads in a row by far!! I wish I had screen shots because one looked like the same suit each time. I find that nearly impossible (among other highly improbable things I've seen). Does the algorithm need a tune up with a better gate included? A conditional IF to prevent such a bogus outcome? Btw... I use the auto draw.
ReplyDeleteThe shuffle is always random. That means there is nothing preventing something like that from happening. No "gate" of any kind whatsoever. Nothing is manipulating or preventing any card at any time, and we definitely will not be adding such a thing. If you are using the automatic cut feature, it simply picks a random cut card instead of you explicitly selecting one. It is also worth remembering, if you have read other blog posts about the shuffle, that the shuffle system is a complete separate system from any game, and it has no knowledge of the game it is producing the shuffled deck for, or the players who are playing it, or what previous decks were sent to the game (there is zero deck memory).
DeleteWhat happens when players don't finish 10 games per week. A drop in ranking should be applied as some seem to stay ranked when they clearly don't have enough games played to be ranked where they are.
ReplyDeleteYes, they get a CR penalty.
DeleteI love this game, playing cribbage for about 60 yrs. However, I have noticed a pattern here, when I play someone with higher ranking than me in the tournament mode, 8 out of 10 times they win. Hands dealt to them equal 12 or more pts whereas I am lucky to get 4. I have noticed this for the last several seasons. Would like to know if other players have noticed this pattern.
ReplyDeleteHi, thanks for continuing to support Cribbage Pro! I have covered this idea quite a lot in the past, but I'll respond again briefly here in case it helps clarify. The game is fair and honest in every respect. Period. No exceptions. It uses a random shuffle at all times. There is no way for it to even stack the deck if it wanted to, as the shuffle system is independent of the game code. I realize it may sound harsh, but there is skill in the game of cribbage, and what may appear to be unreasonable luck may be better attributed to strategy and skill. Not always, as there is certainly luck involved, but there is a ton of skill and strategy in the game once you start studying it in depth.
DeleteThis morning the new UI showed up. Is there a way to back to the previous one? This new UI is pretty clunky and somewhat bugg.
ReplyDeleteHi, the beta hasn't been fully released yet, but the beta was made available to the paid version of the game on Android (Cribbage Pro Online), which I'm guessing is what you are seeing. Yes, you can go to the Google Play Store listing for the game and leave the beta if you want to, but I would really appreciate your specific feedback to help make the game better for everyone as this will soon be released as the full version for all. Please email me at support@FullerSystems.com with what you find as "clunky" and what you saw as "buggy". I definitely want to address your concerns and would really appreciate it if you could expand your thoughts in a quick email and perhaps include some screenshots if possible.
DeleteThis new UI is a step backwards. How do you turn off animations for the deal? Even when it's set to fast it's still clunky and slow.
ReplyDeleteHi, as before, please email us at support@FullerSystems.com so we can work with you directly on any feedback about the beta. It could be that something specific to your device is happening here, as the fast animation options are definitely anything but slow when working correctly and the game has always included animations for dealing the cards. I would really appreciate it if you could please email us any relevant screenshots and include the make and model of the device you are using so we can investigate it further with you.
DeleteSent an email. Not sure if this is related but finding a match since I've been on the beta this morning has taken a LONG time. Didn't help having a 4300+ rating and getting matched up with a 3500 player.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sending an email. The beta doesn't impact any fundamental elements of the game itself, and definitely doesn't change how the matchmaking works. I'll follow up with your email separately. Thanks for taking the time to help!
DeleteI’ve been playing on the beta version for over a month. Most of the bugs are gone, the in-game animations seem just fine after playing for awhile. I went back to the original for a few games and I prefer the new version now. Matching times haven’t been affected as far as I can tell.
DeleteI am not the best player in the world, consider myself an average player. I usually run an average rating of between 3800 and 3900 with a percentile rank of 70 to 75%. Just wondering what I did wrong. I have had some horrendous runs of bad luck in this season. I've had an 11, 9, and am currently in a 17 series losing streak. I lose to people higher than me, lower than me, people who seem to have just started with a rating of 2,500 or so. To say it is frustrating is a bit of an understatement. I should be able to win one in 17 with my eyes closed and just discarding random cards.
ReplyDeleteSorry you are frustrated with your current run. Luck is a tricky thing, and certainly plays a factor. Because the deck is always random, and as such it has no memory of how many games anyone has ever won/lost or what cards it is giving to any game/player, it is quite possible to have an extended period of bad luck. Put another way, you could play your very first game here and in the very first hand get a 29. That is just the nature of random. I can't say for sure if you are just in a random slump, or if perhaps there are some areas of skill you could work on. Start with the links as provided in the FAQ for strategy, and dive through the multiple blog posts, and consider reading some of the great strategy books out there if you have not already.
DeleteI have not changed the way I play, must just be some ridiculous slump. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks for listening to me whine :)
DeleteThis game can give some pretty bad streaks. Even De Lynn Colvert discusses going on double digit losing streaks and trying to stay true to the numbers strategy wise. If you are then hang in there. We've all had them. I would say there's always something to learn strategy wise and staying within the averages. Or, you could try what I do when DKatz has those monster hands against me. I try to flip my phone upside down and steal his good hands. I like to think it works. Alas, it probably just makes me feel better.
DeleteI'll try that upside down thing. That's brilliant! :)
DeleteThis matchmaking system just doesn't make sense. It's been challenging finding a game over the past two days. I normally give it 10 seconds and restart the search but after countless attempts without a game I let the search run a little longer. My CR was 4262 and what's the best match you find... a player at 2962. There's no rationale for that and if you lose your CR takes a bigger hit than if you win which just barely moves it up. I enjoy the game but the matchmaking system is stupid. If there are no players within a reasonable range just display a message stating this instead of randomly grabbing anyone from the game.
ReplyDeleteHi, there are limits in place. Send me the details of this match (your username, time it started) to support@FullerSystems.com and I'll take a look.
DeleteI've been experienced similar, though not quite as extreme, as Uber Pooch. I try and wait 15 seconds for a match before resetting, however, as the requirement to complete ten games gets closer, I tend to extend my wait time to 20 seconds, often to my chagrin. Sitting at 4300 and waiting 20 - 25 seconds has matched me with opponents of around 3600; a loss to such an opponent an be as much as 30 points with a win earning a meagre 3 points. Please, please, please, either narrow the void or give a "no matching player found" notification.
DeleteAgreed, 100%. The match up algorithm needs to change, or limit the amount of hit the higher rated player takes on losing to a lower rated person. Got matched with a CR 3200 player yesterday that had a 28 and 20 score with first 2 hands. Tough to come back from that. Dropped 5 spots on Leaderboard. Like previous player, this was on a Saturday and I needed 1 more match for my 10th of week. Guessing I'd have been better off with the CR hit for not playing 10.
DeleteIt's impossible to have the highly improbable happen twice but it did. Several months ago I pointed out in the draw for dealing to start the game a pair of queens were drawn. On the next draw another pair of queens were drawn. On the third draw a queen was drawn by a player and finally a non queen was drawn. What's the odds 5 out of 6 cut cards are queens?!!
ReplyDeleteJust this morning the exact same thing occurred. 5 out of 6 drawn cards cutting for deal were queens again. Too much to believe it randomly happens probability-wise in the history of mankind in the universe, let alone in several months. Too bad i can't verify the same suits were cut each time too. No wonder so many user are suspicious of so many "common" rare occurrences...
Random is random. If you can provide me with the dates and times, I can pull the logs and share the details if you want.
DeleteI can only provide the time regarding today's. About 5:20AM EST on 2/10. I can't provide more about the first occurrence, but in my comment to you right at that time I cited exactlu when it happened. You'd have to find that one. I'm sure you save all comments from users and since I only have a few it should be easy to search on my name to find the other.
DeleteRandom is random, but when something of very high probability occurs it gets notice. When the same thing happens twice people shake their head. If your neighbor wins the powerball one it's amazingly improbable but it happens. Win it a short time later again and I'm sure everyone and their brother is suspecting something isn't quite right.
To draw the same cards twice in a row certainly can happen, especially if it's queens once and 5's the next draw. Back to back queen pairs is harder to believe. When a 5th straight queen is drawn, it's a hard pill to swallow. Then to have the same thing happen exactly the same way again with the queens 5 out of 6 draws??!!! I can't swallow that as random. But you'll have to verify both incidences.
Btw... this is not the only "random" improbable event that occurs too often that is suspicious. I searched for odds of a 29 point hand being dealt. Good article said it was 1 in 216,000. And that's dealing someone 6 straight cards... not dealing out 12 straight and each player gets 6 of them. Another player figured in who can get a 5 dealt to them kills the 29 hand and makes the odds much more difficult to figure... but is way more that 1 in 216,000. Yet I just saw a player who's played 22,000 games and has 6 hands of 29 dealt. If every game has roughly 10 hands, he's got 6 out 220,000 for getting 29. Beats the odds by way way too much to believe. I wonder how many users who has played this game in real life with real cards have had a 29 hand... let alone multiple. Yet checking people's stats, there are a lot with multiple 29 hands. Too frequent to me...
Would have to run a good Monte Carlo Sim to see how long it takes for a 29 (or even 28) hand to be dealt. Then twice... Same thing to see how long it takes for 5 out of 6 draws from a full deck produce the same value cards. iPeg could run that straight up.
You're game is very entertaining and well laid out graphically. There are some unreal but fun and unbelievable fantastic finishes, but they are too unrealistically often to believe at times. Still the best cribbage game out there!
I'll see if I can find some time later today to track both of these down for you, although the day is already fairly busy. I also don't keep game logs for very long on an easily recoverable archive (for space, they are rolled off to an offline archive), so we will see if the earlier event is still readily available or not.
DeleteIt is probably important to clarify what I meant by "random is random". The deck is always shuffled again after both players cut for deal. That makes each and every time you cut for deal an independent event. It has no memory of the past deck or cut, and so each time you cut a card the odds of getting any card from the deck is identical each time. It doesn't matter that you cut a Queen the first time, or the second time, etc. They are totally independent events from completely newly randomly shuffled decks. The odds don't change just because you cut a certain card the last time. I know that sounds counterintuitive sometimes, but if you think about it mathematically, you will see it proves out.
On the 29 hand odds, as Wikipedia states, "if we assume that the player will always keep J555 if those cards are included in the hand, the odds of getting a perfect 29 hand starting with a six-card hand are 1 in 216,580". Your assertion that the odds change when dealing 12 cards is incorrect. What other cards are dealt to some other player is entirely irrelevant in a randomly shuffled deck. So it is most definitely not "way more" in that scenario - it is in fact exactly the same odds every time.
Now, it is important to understand what "odds" means here. It doesn't mean that someone is somehow prevented from getting a 29 hand more often than that. You could, in theory, get two 29 hands in a row and it wouldn't necessarily mean anything was "wrong" in any way. It just means that taken on the average, that is what one could expect to see over many many different hands over time in a fully randomized shuffle/deal. So you don't just look at one individual player and have enough data to come to a conclusion about the odds playing out as expected or not. That is why when we conduct an audit, we don't just look at a single player, a single game, a single day, a single week or even a single month of cards the system produces. We have to look at many millions of decks/hands in order to get a sufficient sample size relative to all of the possible decks/hands out there. The possible outcomes of a shuffle of 52 cards is 52 factorial - a massively huge number. You want to get the best sample of that as possible when conducting analysis. Anything else is just anecdote. I have it on my list to pull the data on 29 hands over a larger sample, but I haven't had the time to make it a priority. If someone wants to conduct analysis of the decks/hands, understands data analysis and is willing to publish the results in a helpful way to the cribbage community, just reach out to me any time and I am willing to share the millions of decks/hands in our game logs for analysis as I have done multiple times to guest posts on this blog. We don't need a "Monte Carlo Sim" to do it, as we already have real life data to draw from, just like I already do when conducting an audit.
Thanks for your support of the game, and know that I appreciate the questions and conversation. It is good to be skeptical, but then it is also good to follow sound science and analysis and let the data inform our beliefs. We have done some of that already in our published audits, and as I just mentioned, I am open to anyone else doing even more analysis as well.
OK, so here is the log from today's game that you mentioned. Unfortunately, the log from early December was rolled off to offline backup a few days back, so I can't get at that without a special/expensive (time/money) data request, archive pull and full data recovery process. So, here is the sequence of events that started at 2023-02-10 10:23:45 UTC:
Delete****************
Game starts
New shuffled deck:
7D,AD,7C,KC,JD,QC,KH,10D,10H,3C,10S,8H,8C,9D,QH,5S,JH,AS,3H,5H,3S,9S,QS,10C,4S,6H,KS,JC,KD,QD,9C,5C,7H,4C,8S,5D,3D,JS,6S,8D,4D,2D,6C,2H,9H,4H,2S,AC,AH,6D,7S,2C
Player 1 cuts at position 23 of the deck, result is QS
Player 2 cuts at position 6, result is QC
New shuffled deck:
6C,4S,6S,5C,AS,JS,KH,QS,JH,KD,KS,QC,7C,JD,2D,2C,8C,5H,9D,4D,9H,5D,4H,7S,10S,8H,3C,2H,AH,6D,3S,QH,JC,8D,7H,5S,10H,QD,10D,9S,6H,AC,8S,2S,9C,7D,3H,4C,10C,KC,AD,3D
Player 1 cuts at position 12, result is QC
Player 2 cuts at position 8, result is QS
New shuffled deck:
AD,5D,10S,KC,JH,QD,10H,3H,10C,9C,4S,AC,KH,6H,2D,QH,AS,8S,6D,5H,AH,6S,8D,7D,6C,2H,4H,JC,JD,QS,3S,2S,KD,KS,4D,3D,4C,8H,9D,7H,5C,JS,9S,3C,5S,7S,8C,7C,2C,QC,10D,9H
Player 1 cuts at position 23, result is 8D
Player 2 cuts at position 6, result is QD
****************
What is important to see here, is that you always get the card at the position you select from the spread out deck. If you just use the "Cut" button directly, and don't touch the cards, then your device picks a random valid number and sends that to the game server as the position to pull from. If either player would have touched just one card up or down, it changes everything. As the first and last sequence has the players selecting the exact same positions in the deck as they started with, my guess is there is a bit of a habit there of touching a specific area of the deck/screen on a regular basis. Still, the deck is randomly shuffled, so it really doesn't matter.
I'm sure you could "analyze" the decks for these situations and try to see some patterns in them, but you would be looking at just 3 decks out of the thousands produced just today so far. These decks also represent just one of many that the deck shuffling system produced over that same time period. The deck shuffling system is independent of the game system, and it just sits there and shuffles decks all day long, and passes out the shuffled decks to games when they ask for one. It doesn't know anything about the game it is sending the shuffled deck to, or anything else like that. It would be as if you had someone sitting in a closet, completely isolated from the world around them, and just shuffling decks of cards and tossing them out blindly to a very busy casino floor whenever someone knocks on the door. Random decks, and no bias.
Anyway, I hope this helps answer your question, and sheds a little more light on how it works as well. Similarly, I hope the transparency here is helpful as well, and know that the offer to let others analyze the data is always on the table.
Ballbuster, if you don’t cherry pick one player, you will find that the occurrence of 29 hands on this app is very consistent with probability. Use the top 50 list and add up about a million games, which is around 9 million deals. Let us know what you find.
DeleteiPeg on Twitch - iPeg would like to try to broadcast his final multiplayer competitive match of the season on the CribbagePro channel on Twitch. The broadcast will begin at 7:30 pm central time on Thursday, March 2nd. iPeg is ipeg2 on Twitch. Anyone who would like to play in the match, line up and start matching at exactly 7:30 pm central. I will start matching then and let the timer run. I will not have the microphone on, partially because of the distraction and partially because I tend to swear a lot when cuts go bad. Thanks everyone!
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome! This should be fun. I'll be watching. For those that don't want to do the math, that is 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern (1:30am in London, unfortunately).
DeleteWhen does the season officially end? I tried logging in with over an hour left on the season to try to climb a couple of spots, but it says Season ending soon, no more matches allowed. It'd be nice to know for future reference.
ReplyDeleteThere are two answers to this. The ending time is 23:00 UTC on the day (so this season it is March 7th at 23:00 UTC). However, new matches can not start about an hour prior to that (actually 1.25 hours, so 21:45 UTC). This is to allow all matches enough time to finish and then for the system to tabulate the final results. If you are in a match after 21:45 UTC, you will not be kicked out or anything like that. This also prevents someone from starting a match at the very last second, and then we all have to wait for their match to finish before we can start a new season.
Delete