Competitive Cribbage - Winter 2022 Season

Welcome to the Winter 2022 Season of Competitive Matchmaking for Cribbage Pro! Yes, it is still 2021 when we start this season, but I think we have had enough of 2021. The Autumn 2021 season has ended, and in a way that I honestly did not expect. So many new faces on the Top 50 leaderboard this last season, several of which came in at the "last minute" to make their way into the top rankings, and of course a new 1st place player as well! Please continue to tell your friends about competitive cribbage, and of course the chance to win the prizes! Thank you to all who were once again able to participate in this great game of cribbage!

As many will attest, it takes some significant commitment to achieve this, and so I want to very sincerely recognize that hard work here. I'm humbled by the individual effort put in by so many. That said, I also hear that it would be nice to lower that level of work a bit to allow more people a chance to participate. This season we are making some smaller changes, but won't be making the bigger changes until next season when I do plan to include more of your suggestions. Before I get into the more minor changes this season later in this post, let me take a moment to recognize the top players last season.

In 1st place, we have "ThreeG". Great job on achieving this rank and beating out some great competition! 2nd place is "iPeg", and I am sure you are all deeply saddened to see them fall from 1st place, after sitting there multiple seasons. In 3rd we have "Dhrun", which again I know took a lot of work to get there! There were several big improvements again this season, but we really saw a lot of new players in the Top 50, so congratulations to you all as well.

As with past seasons, everyone who finished the season in the Top 50 ("Recent" list), have 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 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. 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

Remember to complete your 10 matches per week. See the FAQ for details. Play early, and play often!

Here was the final Top 50 for Autumn 2021:

1	ThreeG	26	4MrHand
2	iPeg	27	glaicer29
3	Dhrun	28	jkruger
4	card55	29	ernie313
5	flashmatt	30	gstorm77
6	kcguy	31	Paxter
7	Saskie	32	RatKing
8	lbolt58	33	VGKnights
9	WhyADuck	34	dkatz1877
10	XLNC21	35	Linkup
11	UberPooch	36	0wl
12	Domerzag	37	Br1Guy
13	nob4one	38	cribberoo
14	jwick60	39	jwr13
15	hillchem	40	dph
16	xdb1135	41	Yompopo
17	rattle15	42	DdsG
18	nvsru911	43	shudbgolf
19	chiyo1	44	stephzzz
20	beth0223	45	gmax
21	Cmoney421	46	airmark7
22	jjonell	47	Trucha1
23	mountains	48	Rhuby
24	better69	49	Birddoggy
25	Swodis	50	lovJesus

The levels in Competitive Matchmaking are available in the FAQ.

Important Changes This Season

Now to briefly go over some important changes this new season. First, we have changed the rule about how late you can come into the season and start playing. You now must have completed your placement matches 3 weeks prior to the end of the season. This should give enough time to let the ranking settle out the top players without the potential for a few lucky matches to drive rankings sideways at the end of a season.

Second, multiple pieces of the matchmaking system have changed. The biggest change is that we now will enforce a maximum CR difference between players once you get to the Diamond level. That means you shouldn't see someone who is 1000 CR lower/higher than you being matched at that point (and it is fairly unlikely at the lower levels too). The second change is a bit more complex to describe, but put simply it tweaks how the system determines if it thinks the matchup will produce a "good game" and let it through as a positive potential match. I think both of these changes will allow some more movement in the leaderboard in a good way, while also reducing that "risk" of waiting too long and being matched against someone too much lower than you. One of the real life "daily" impacts is that you may wait a little longer for a match, but also that you should not exit out of the matchmaking while waiting like before if you were trying to avoid that lower CR match. It will be fun to see how this all plays out, and note that we may make some tweaks throughout the season if it looks like it any of this isn't achieving the desired outcomes.

One last minor change is a tweak to how wait times are calculated. It is definitely far from perfect, but just remember it is based on what players of your similar level are seeing as wait times on average recently. As such, it will lose accuracy during slower times when fewer players are playing. I am honestly debating if this feature is very helpful, and so please let me know your feedback if you would rather that space on the screen be used for something else or just gone.

Finally, know that we are looking into some potentially bigger changes for the next season. If you have played a few seasons here and have some thoughts on what you would like to see done, please email us at support@FullerSystems.com with your suggestions. Similarly, if you have never played and something is holding you back, let us know. It is primarily what you all suggest that drives what I work on next, so let your voice be heard.

Older iOS or Android Device Not Connecting to Multiplayer?

Is your older iOS or Android device no longer able to connect to play online multiplayer games, but instead you get a general error about a potential account problem or other connection problem? If you have tried resetting your password and making sure your internet connection is working correctly, but still have problems, you may be experiencing a problem with not having recent security updates (or probably any updates at all recently) on your older device. If you are using an older iOS version older than iOS 10 or Android less than version 7.1.1 (with some exceptions), that older device does not have the latest security updates required to connect securely to the game servers. Without going into a lot of technical details as to why/how this has happened, know that there is this concept of a "root certificate" that your device is missing, but needs to be installed and trusted in order to be able to continue to connect to the game (and many other websites/apps in the future as well most likely). That root certificate is the one used by our website to secure it over HTTPS/SSL (again, skipping over most of the technical parts), and is provided by a company called "LetsEncrypt" (they provide our SSL Certificate). The solution is to add this root certificate to your older device manually. You need to use your device that is having problems to follow these high level steps:

1. On your device having the problem, go to https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/
2. Scroll down to the section below the image titled "Root Certificates", and under the "Active" listing the first item is "ISRG Root X1".
3. Under "ISRG Root X1", to the right of that is the "Self Signed" item linked as "der".  Select and download that "der" certificate file.
4. Open that file on your device and follow any prompts to install it as a root certificate. How you do this exactly will depend on your device. For example, here is how to install a certificate on an Android Pixel device. Other Android devices will require you to go to the Settings app and under a Security section to install the certificate, while most older iOS devices will guide you directly after trying to open the file.

Once installed, you may have to restart your device and then try again to use the game. If simply opening the certificate file you downloaded does not get you started on installing the root certificate, you may have to do a Google search for specific instructions for how to install it on your specific device. It is usually just a few short steps.

Finally, if you try this and still have problems, then this may not be what is causing your issue and you should email us at support@FullerSystems.com for further assistance.