CRIBBAGE(6)

NAME
cribbage - the card game cribbage

SYNOPSIS
/usr/games/cribbage [ -req ] name ...

DESCRIPTION
Cribbage plays the card game cribbage, with cribbage playing one hand and the user the other. Cribbage initially asks the user if the rules of the game are needed - if so, cribbage displays the appropriate section from According to Hoyle with more(1).

OPTIONS

-e  Provide an explanation of the correct score when the player makes mistakes scoring his hand or crib. This is especially useful for beginning players.

-q  Print a shorter form of all messages - this is only recommended for users who have played the game without specifying this option.

-r  Instead of asking the player to cut the deck, cribbage will randomly cut the deck.

PLAYING CRIBBAGE

Cribbage first asks the player whether he wishes to play a short game (“once around”, to 61) or a long game (“twice around”, to 121). A response of `s' results in a short game, any other response plays a long game.

At the start of the first game, cribbage asks the player to cut the deck to determine who gets the first crib. The user should respond with a number between 0 and 51, indicating how many cards down the deck is to be cut. The player who cuts the lower ranked card gets the first crib. If more than one game is played, the loser of the previous game gets the first crib in the current game.

For each hand, cribbage first prints the player's hand, whose crib it is, and then asks the player to discard two cards into the crib. The cards are prompted for one per line, and are typed as explained below.

After discarding, cribbage cuts the deck (if it is the player's crib) or asks the player to cut the deck (if it's its crib); in the later case, the appropriate response is a number from 0 to 39 indicating how far down the remaining 40 cards are to be cut.

After cutting the deck, play starts with the non-dealer (the person who doesn't have the crib) leading the first card. Play continues, as per cribbage, until all cards are exhausted. Cribbage keeps track of the scoring of all points and the total of the cards on the table.

After play, the hands are scored. Cribbage requests the player to score his hand (and the crib, if it is his) by printing out the appropriate cards (and the cut card enclosed in brackets). Play continues until one player reaches the game limit (61 or 121).

A carriage return when a numeric input is expected is equivalent to typing the lowest legal value; when cutting the deck this is equivalent to choosing the top card.

SPECIFYING CARDS

Cards are specified as rank followed by suit. The ranks may be specified as one of a, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, t, j, q, and k, or alternatively, one of ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, and king. Suits may be specified as s, h, d, and c, or alternatively as spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. A card may be specified as rank suit, or rank of suit. If the single letter rank and suit designations are used, the space separating the suit and rank may be left out. Also, if only one card of the desired rank is playable, typing the rank is sufficient. For example, if your hand was 2h, 4d, 5c, 6h, jc, kd and you wanted to discard the king of diamonds, you could type any of k, king, kd, k d, k of d, king d, king of d, k diamonds, k of diamonds, king diamonds, or king of diamonds.

FILES
/usr/games/cribbage