Season 2 of Multiplayer Competitive Matchmaking!

Wow, that went by fast! Here we are in Season 2 of Competitive Matchmaking, and it still feels like the first season started yesterday. Before I jump into some changes/tweaks in Season 2, I want to take a moment to congratulate the top players of the first season, and of course go over what they won for their prize. Congratulations to everyone who made it into the Top 50 Leaderboard for Competitive Matchmaking! A particular congratulations to the top 3 players, kb92129, PegSurfer and our top finisher Nytric456!! Each of the top 3 also reached the final CR Level of Grand-Master! I know many have worked very hard to get to where they placed, so congratulations to everyone no matter where you ended the season for such a great competitive season. If you didn't make the Top 50 this time, now is your chance to start fresh and go for the gold!

Speaking of "gold", everyone who finished the season in the Top 50 ("Recent" list, not "All Time"), were 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 cold hard 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, Nytric456, 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, 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):

• 2 Gold for Top 50
• 4 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 first season included many thousands of players competing from all over the world, and the number of players grew every single day up until the very end. Season 2 is certainly going to be even more competitive than before, so hang in there and work hard to improve your game - and of course, have fun! With that said, here are some important changes in Season 2:

• This new season will be a little shorter, at 90 days
• All competitive players must play a minimum of 10 games per week to avoid a reduction in ranking. This is not really a "penalty", but it is a reduction in the systems confidence level of your rank if you don't play enough to calculate a rank accurately. The more time that you do not play, the less we know about how well you would perform relative to those who are playing. This 10 game minimum is likely a commitment that not everyone can make. However, this is "the big time" intended for the serious cribbage player, and the system simply has to have enough game play information to get rankings as accurate as possible. If you play just a few games per day, you will have over 10 in a week very quickly. I strongly recommend not waiting until the last day.
• Starting in Season 2, we have "tweaked" the formula used in calculating the ranking change you earn when you win or lose a match (what you will see as your CR going up or down). These changes were done to try and more accurately represent the nature of the game of cribbage, and the inevitable "ups and downs" players can go through, so that the ranking can be a bit more fluid (although, probably just slightly more). These were not big changes, just some "tuning" that we think will help. I expect we will continue tuning this system for multiple seasons to come as we see how each change performs in the real world.

Those are the biggest changes coming in Season 2. We never want to change too many things all at one time, as doing so would make it hard to know what changes were having what results in the game, but if you have other suggestions that you have not shared with us yet, please do let us know.

I hope you all enjoy Season 2 of Competitive Matchmaking in Cribbage Pro!

UPDATE 2:

The Leaderboard for Competitive Matchmaking will now show win/loss/totals for the current season only. You can view the lifetime totals in the individual stats for each player.

UPDATE 1: 

Here is what the score box area and pegs awarded look like for those who were awarded them:

  

  

Also as requested, here was the final Top 50 for Season 1:

1	Nytric456	26	PALONSO
2	PegSurfer	27	scout3
3	kb92129	28	12floz
4	Br1Guy	29	fisher17
5	iPeg	30	c3polerud
6	TC2	31	akeigwin
7	dubbinit	32	Geofred1
8	jmath714	33	flashmatt
9	dixietix	34	HeadNinja
10	nob4one	35	642sas
11	flyangler	36	Menks02
12	VGKnights	37	BOShag
13	dcpastore	38	Cmoney421
14	Dpac	39	MonkeyGod
15	james500	40	infinity
16	CzarMark	41	conelson
17	Moondog44	42	steelock7
18	19thhole	43	ski01
19	29ffrey	44	Yompopo
20	duke62	45	mbhenjum
21	BigD4Life	46	jeffcoull
22	habsgoose	47	Freddie69
23	Cgardin	48	sheepman
24	picklejew	49	gsosin
25	CT398	50	godawgs13

As a refresher, the levels are simply a breakdown of the CR value like this:

Bronze - 1 - 1499 CR

Silver - 1500 - 1999 CR

Gold - 2000 - 2499 CR

Platinum - 2500 - 2999 CR

Diamond - 3000 - 3499 CR

Master - 3500 - 3999 CR

Grand-master - 4000+ CR

Increased Contest Prize Amount!

Contest Prize Amount Now 97%

We are pleased to announce that effective immediately, Cribbage Contests (games played for real cash prizes) will now award the winner 97% of all entry fees collected (previously 85%)! This is the largest prize awarded for any online cribbage game anywhere!

We have recently made several changes to our Contests system to help streamline it and make it more efficient. These changes significantly lower our cost to run and maintain the system, and so we are passing that directly to you. You will not find any online cribbage contest system anywhere that can give you a higher cash prize amount. If you have been thinking about trying out the Cribbage Pro Contest system, now is a great time to start!