Cribbage Competitive Matchmaking - Active Times of Day

I was recently asked, and have been asked in various ways before, about what times of the day are most active in Cribbage Competitive Matchmaking. The goal here is to provide some insight into that question, and to help people find the best times to look for a match, particularly if you have a more flexible schedule and just want to know when is best to log in and play.

First, a few important notes. All times are in UTC, so you will need to convert to your local time and consider things like Daylight Saving Time if that happens in your part of the world. Second, I realize that in sharing this information it could make the busy times even busier and the less active times even harder to find a match. However, I hope that in the end this is beneficial to everyone.

Here is the current activity for Spring 2023, by hour of the day (again, in UTC).

As the chart shows, this is just so far this season, which has only been a few weeks. Still, I think it is pretty accurate. The reason for that is, this was the same season last year, as seen below for Spring 2022:

To add a little more color, here was the previous season, Winter 2023:

Some brief thoughts on this. Note that the 9th hour UTC in the winter (no DST) is 1am PST (4am EST), while the 8th hour in "spring" is still 1am in Pacific time, but that is in PDT (due to DST). You subtract 8 from UTC time to get PST, and subtract 7 to get PDT. So things don't really change much from season to season. That said, around the 14th hour through to about the 3rd hour (the next day) UTC time, there is the highest amount of activity in the matchmaking system. To do the math for you, that would be from 7am PDT (10am EDT) to 8pm PDT (11pm EDT) as the most active. The highest points are really from around 21/22 to 2, if you are looking for the height of activity.

Lastly, with respect to the day of the week, as I'm sure you are all thinking of that as your next question, things are surprisingly "flat". Saturday, Sunday and Monday see maybe just a slight increase overall for the entire season, and sometimes Wednesday does as well. So Tuesday would be the "worst" of the days, but not by a lot. I have no idea why Wednesday sees a spike from time to time, but, it does, and then often climbs a little through Thursday and Friday into the weekend. If I wanted to play when most everyone else is, I would not worry about the day of the week so much, but then try for a time around 2pm to 7pm Pacific time, 5pm to 10pm Eastern.

Again, I hope this information is helpful, and can be used to bring more people together to find the best challenging, and fun matches!

Competitive Cribbage - Spring 2023

The Spring 2023 Season of Competitive Cribbage is Live!

The very busy Winter 2023 season of competitive cribbage has now closed. All of the stats and top finishers are locked and recorded. Winter 2023 was one of the most (almost nearly the top) active seasons so far! It had more players than we have had in quite a long time, and a lot more matches played than ever before! That says a lot, considering the seasons are a little shorter now than they were when we first started. I know some of you still had times where finding a match was harder than ideal, and other times where you were matched with someone with a lower CR that you may have felt shouldn't have been matched. I understand that frustration, and I'm working on some ideas to help address that better in the future. Our journey to the best system may never reach a final destination, but it will be a work of constant improvement. The best solution to both of these for right now will be to encourage your friends to participate too. The more people who play more often, the faster matches can be found and the closer those matches will be.

Although the weather outside where I am right now isn't exactly "spring like" just yet, I hope it will be soon! I have been very busy getting app updates and features developed lately, so this Spring 2023 season keeps the format consistent with no significant changes.

Winter 2023 was an exciting season that also welcomed several new players. The Top 50 has quite a few new players. I still love seeing new players come in and make a run for it (as one definitely did this season)! 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 Winter 2023, we have "iPeg" up from 5th last season, and definitely a regular top finisher. Honestly, that is pretty impressive. Someday we will need to have iPeg share all of their secrets with the world. 2nd place is someone entirely new to the Top 50, and relatively new to Cribbage Pro as well, "rookie22". I suppose the username says it all. In 3rd we have "nob4one", who we have seen around these parts before as well. Other interesting movements in the Top 50 included "dcpastore", who made a valiant run for 2nd or 3rd, but got bumped back to finish 5th. "Domerzag" moved up 27 placed to finish in 11th place, and "rattle15" finished in 12th up 24! It was super fun for me to watch the battle for positions towards the end of this season, and in particular the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions in the last few days. I hope you all enjoyed it as well! There are, of course, many others who made some significant gains, and many familiar names on the list as well, so 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 and Windows 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 Winter 2023:

1	iPeg	26	tassie08
2	rookie22	27	dkatz1877
3	nob4one	28	Dpac
4	Dhrun	29	lbolt58
5	dcpastore	30	pegmstr77
6	yvanobc12	31	SharksFin
7	balment	32	MTBiggs
8	scoot1234	33	4KA
9	WhyADuck	34	cbx1000z
10	Gssj21	35	kansas666
11	Domerzag	36	UberPooch
12	rattle15	37	Chipchamp
13	BigD4Life	38	gmric5
14	TC2	39	scottniq
15	Paludeja	40	deeney0
16	cyrusg	41	pscohen
17	Mrpadre	42	warrior14
18	yank29	43	Chelsea64
19	dph	44	reefmad
20	fbc2k23	45	rpmcd
21	gotupeggd	46	5150dog
22	Doksboy	47	monniermb
23	TrumpetJ	48	Duane1952
24	Shavesy82	49	aela
25	nvsru911	50	Mharold

The levels in Competitive Matchmaking are available in the FAQ.

New Version of Cribbage Pro Available in Beta!

Just another reminder, that the Beta is still available, and hopefully wrapping up relatively soon! If you haven't checked it out yet, you can read more about it in the blog post about the Cribbage Pro Beta.

As a reminder, if you have played here and have some thoughts on what you would like to see around prizes, structure or anything else, please email us at support@FullerSystems.com with your suggestions.