Season 3 of Multiplayer Competitive Matchmaking!

UPDATE: We have just extended this season by one more day to end 2021-02-24 23:00:00 UTC, to better align calendars for future plans.

UPDATE: Remember, you need to complete 10 matches per week, or face a CR penalty due to reduction in the ranking confidence factor. See the FAQ for details.

The competitive seasons just keep on rolling! It was a blast to watch the competitive Season 2 evolve and grow. We saw roughly the same number of players, but thousands more matches played! We also saw many more new players involved, with many new names in the Leaderboard. Overall, the Competitive Matchmaking System saw about 40% more activity every day. What this means is that everyone who participated really worked very hard to earn that final ranking! I'm sure the global pandemic has been a part of how active the community has been in playing, but I do hope that you all have found this a fun season to participate in, and at the very least a helpful distraction during this time.

A big thank you to everyone who participated, and of course a hearty congratulations to our top finishers. In 1st place, we have "iPeg" (up from 5th place in last season). 2nd place is "TC2" (up from 6th) and in 3rd we find "dkatz1877" who is new to the Competitive Matchmaking Leaderboard this season, although active for many years in the game. If you were someone who didn't place this season, keep trying and I'm sure you will find your winning streak! Of course, we always recommend reading through the cribbage strategy tips and the many related blog posts to sharpen up.

I asked "iPeg" (aka Kelly Holt from Wisconsin, USA) to share some perspective on the great game of cribbage. If you want to earn a top spot yourself, it would be hard to disagree with this advice:

"People who are smarter and more eloquent than I have written entire books on detailed cribbage strategies, so I won’t begin to try to cover many of them, but I have a few guidelines that have helped me to win more often. One is to always discard and play your hand based upon statistics, and not hunches.  Another is to play the best players, from which you will learn the most.  A third is to self-critique your own play, and never stop learning and adjusting.  After playing for over twenty five years, I’ve changed the way I lead from certain hands in just the last year or two. And finally, read those cribbage books!"

As with last season, everyone who finished the season in the Top 50 ("Recent" list, not "All Time"), 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 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, iPeg, 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

New Season 3

For Season 3, we have decided to not make any significant changes to the competitive matchmaking system. We have been pretty happy with the participation, competitive spirit and overall results of how the system performed in Season 2, and in some areas where we are debating making some changes we felt it was best to not do so over the coming holiday time. As always, email us your questions, feedback and suggestions or leave a comment here if you are looking for some community feedback on it (please don't use the comments area for account questions or other issues). We are constantly looking at ways to improve, and your input is the key to that!

Season 2 History:

Here was the final Top 50 for Season 2:

1	iPeg	26	bhills22
2	TC2	27	flashmatt
3	dkatz1877	28	gmric5
4	Luc88	29	Geofred1
5	silentmax	30	rattle15
6	hillchem	31	MTBiggs
7	fisher17	32	VGKnights
8	47don	33	Birddoggy
9	enaud58	34	cribbest
10	card55	35	cyrusg
11	jim1551	36	dcpastore
12	pepperbp	37	Neary74
13	Domerzag	38	dph
14	pscohen	39	Br1Guy
15	BigD4Life	40	jwick60
16	ThreeG	41	Kev8888
17	Trucha1	42	kpcrib123
18	ernie313	43	MadMax863
19	hawkeyewn	44	ALB5555
20	fltxnynzn	45	ringpress
21	yvanobc12	46	Cmoney421
22	cribber91	47	rocks19
23	jmath714	48	joekayak
24	a2zCrib	49	gsosin
25	Moondog44	50	erniem00

As a reference, the levels in Competitive Matchmaking are as follows:

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

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