A good way to practice counting cribbage hands is to play cribbage solitaire. You just need a deck of cards and a cribbage board. To start I deal 2 cards up, one down, two up, one down and two up. The down cards are one half of a crib, I discard 2 of the up cards face down to complete the crib. then I turn over the top card of the remaining pack as the starter card, 2 points for Nibs if it comes up. I then look at the hand, peg points as if I were playing them in sequence, i.e. 15's, runs, pairs, etc., then I count the hand with the starter card and peg the points. Then I count the crib and peg the points. All eight cards used in the hand and crib are put in a "discard" pile. I then deal the starter card to the hand with an up card, 1 down, 2 up , 1 down, and 2 up and continue the way I started. Once through the deck should leave you with three cards left over in the pack. If you can complete 121 holes pegged before the deck runs out you win, but in all honesty the improvement to your counting skills will make you a winner no matter how many times you loose at solitaire.
If you can remember to follow the sequence I outlined above you should be able to pick up most of the points in a typical hand. You will however occasionally find a hand with points that are harder to notice, or so numerous you lose track of the total. The rest of this page is a collection of hands that might cause problems for the beginner or novice player.
