It's time to cozy up with some more competitive cribbage! The Winter 2025 Season of the Cribbage Pro competitive matchmaking tournament is here – giving you the perfect excuse to stay in, play, and outpeg the competition while the frost settles in outside. Jump in to test your skills, sharpen your strategy, and experience the thrill of top-tier cribbage – all from the warmth of home!
Before diving into the exciting news about what's new for Winter 2025, let's take a brief moment to summarize the finish to the Autumn 2024 season.
Autumn 2024
The autumn season had a lot of new faces bringing their top game, and it is always fun to see new names on the list. There was also some interesting drama in the top spots during the final days of the season. We had 4th place jump up to 2nd, bumping everyone else down while 3rd dropped to 5th within just the last 48 hours. It is a good reminder that it is hard to try and just sit comfortably with playing only a few games in the last few days of a season, as we have seen that backfire on a regular basis if you don't have a substantial lead.
For the final results, holding on to first place we have someone we have seen before at the top many seasons back now, "Mrpadre" (up 26 positions from last season), followed by "31four14" in 2nd who has been playing and competing for several seasons with a past best of 17th place (and the player who made that jump from 4th just prior to the end of the season). In 3rd we have "locust" who is also a long time player, but new to the Top 10 (placing 62nd last season, but a best of 14th several seasons back). Lastly, as a quick honorable mention, we have our last season first place finisher "DAiello" in 4th.
Special awards for the Top 50 players include in-game board pegs: the top player receives the "crown" peg, while others in the Top 50 get the "star" peg. These pegs are prominently displayed in online multiplayer games, serving as permanent badges of distinction earned through competitive play.
Reminder: Complete 10 matches per week! See the FAQ for details on the timing each week
Here was the final Top 50 for Autumn 2024:
| 1 | Mrpadre | 26 | dkatz1877 | |
| 2 | 31four14 | 27 | bastien13 | |
| 3 | locust | 28 | Hansolph | |
| 4 | DAiello | 29 | yank29 | |
| 5 | BigCrbNRG | 30 | IAMFAST | |
| 6 | Dhrun | 31 | TripJames | |
| 7 | nob4one | 32 | yvanobc12 | |
| 8 | dixietix | 33 | Checkop | |
| 9 | tbowl75 | 34 | niltes | |
| 10 | Crackula | 35 | AJackOLit | |
| 11 | lbolt58 | 36 | Kinger765 | |
| 12 | dcpastore | 37 | Domerzag | |
| 13 | jwr13 | 38 | a2zCrib | |
| 14 | Dpac | 39 | MatchMe | |
| 15 | jjonell | 40 | Meow80 | |
| 16 | wfdove | 41 | Grandude | |
| 17 | pappy9837 | 42 | Cryb2nite | |
| 18 | whersh | 43 | ernie313 | |
| 19 | UberPooch | 44 | flybill | |
| 20 | BearJoo | 45 | hawkeyewn | |
| 21 | 4KA | 46 | Alaska47 | |
| 22 | linurbug9 | 47 | KayGee | |
| 23 | vJimc | 48 | gmric5 | |
| 24 | WactownD | 49 | dph | |
| 25 | Orelvis | 50 | kpcrib123 |
Improvements for Winter 2025!
In feedback that I get from time to time, I have heard a couple of general themes that are being addressed with changes starting this season. These themes are suggestions about finding ways to keep games moving quickly, improving the turn time limits and enhancement of the player disconnect / reconnect system. Each of these have changes that I believe will help make the game experience better for everyone, and these changes are why we are requiring all participants in the competitive season to have the latest current update of the game in order to play.
First, on the disconnect / reconnect system, there have been improvements made to better track player activity, monitor device connection quality and reduce "time to reconnect". All of these things are "under the hood" changes that have been made for all multiplayer formats in Cribbage Pro, with some special consideration given to the competitive matchmaking games in particular. Of course this doesn't prevent someone from rage quitting, and the system waiting for a reconnect. That is just the nature of online games. However, it should keep accidental disconnects from happening as often, and when they do happen it should improve the recovery of the connection to continue playing. The end results should be fewer disconnects and faster reconnects for everyone, with continued improvements planned for future updates as well based on how these changes perform over time.
For the changes to turn time limits, the first thing that was done is to improve the synchronization of the timers between both players. This will help make it more clear when someone has actually exceeded the turn time limit, and help prevent any false alerts that their time was exceeded when it really had not expired on their device before they initiated the play. However, the big change here is that for competitive matchmaking games only, the turn time limit is now a split timer of 10 seconds to discard, and 6 seconds for all other plays instead of the full 10 seconds every turn. Most players were already performing within those limits, so for many this won't change much at all in your side of the game. However, there were some players where even playing that last card would take the full 10 seconds every time, and that just frustrates everyone who has experienced it and is not in the spirit of true competitive play. A 4 second difference in the timer for playing a card may not sound like much, but it all adds up. In the end, I think this will be a very positive improvement for everyone, and possibly one we can consider adding as an option in classic multiplayer games too.
Finally, to keep games moving quickly without needlessly waiting on your opponent to do the only thing they can do, and related to the previous item around timers, all competitive matchmaking games are now set to always use "Auto Go" and "Auto Deal" every game. That means it does not matter what you set in the overall game settings for those settings (single player and the casual classic multiplayer games aren't impacted by this change and continue to use those overall settings). In this competitive format, the game will now always automatically deal the cards for every hand, and always automatically send the "Go". So now there is never any waiting 10 seconds for your opponent to just give the "Go". It will all happen automatically for both players.
