Kirsten's musings...

Exciting finish!

Tall Ship, Mighty Joe and I decided to play a game of cribbage at lunch today.  At the end, the score was:

K10 (me) 121 points
Mighty Joe 120 points
Tall Ship 119 points

What's even more amazing is that Mighty Joe got to the "stink hole" on the previous hand, and had first count in the last hand.  Somehow Tall Ship and I managed to prevent him from pegging any points, and he had zero points in his hand.  I had 12 points in my hand, plenty to finish out.  Very exciting!

Interesting cribbage hand

So we moved our weekly Thursday cribbage game(s) to Wednesday to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday.  Cards were drawn to form the pairings, so I ended up in a 3-player game with Mighty Joe and Tall Ship Taylor.

About a third of the way through the game I was dealt A-2-2-3-4.  Not bad, I could discard the Ace or the four and still have a double-run.  Sweet!  I decided to discard the Ace since I figured keeping the four would net me more points, knowing how my competition plays the game.  When the cut card came up as another two, it lead to an interesting description of my hand's score.

"No, it doesn't add up to 15, so 15 points."

It's the little things in life that amuse me so much.  :)

Old Fashion beat-down

Tall Ship Taylor and I play cribbage most days at lunch, just to pass the time and keep our skills up.  Yesterday we set a land-speed record for a single match.  Tall Ship crossed the end line on the 7th hand, with me right on his heels.

Today, however, was a very different story.  Tall Ship's first three hands were:

2-3-3-4-8 for 12 points
6-7-7-8-8 for 24 points
5-5-5-10-10 for 22 points

My hands were nowhere near as fruitful.  I made a valiant effort to catch him as his luck changed toward the end, to no avail.  I was still eight points from the skunk line when he crossed the end line.

I have no idea how I'll manage to finish the rest of my day knowing such an embarrassing loss.

The curse of the "commanding lead"

I lost the Cribbage Cup a few weeks ago, so I decided that it was time to win it back.  I issued a challenge to the Mighty Joe Roberts, stating that it was time for the Cup to return to the west side of the building.  He accepted the challenge, and the game was on.

He got off to a big lead in the first game, but I managed to keep it close.  He'd have a 16-point hand followed by 2- and 6- point hands, so my steady flow of 8- and 10- point hands kept me within striking distance.  Unfortunately he managed to peg out before I could make my final push.  Game 1, Mighty Joe.

In the second game it was my turn to go out to a big lead.  After the first turn I was ahead by 33 points, which prompted Mighty Joe to comment that I had a "commanding lead."  Aaargh...this is the curse of death in our cribbage matches.  Just about any time someone is noted to have a "commanding lead," it evaporates, and this was no exception.  He kept chipping away at my lead, passing me on the last leg.  It stayed close to the end, but I couldn't retake the lead.  Game 2, and Match, Mighty Joe.

I know that Rajiv the Tiger wants to take a shot at Mighty Joe, so we'll see how next week's games go.  Joe's had the Cup for far too long.

Cribbage, follow-up

I should have realized that I was leaving myself open to the question "What's your cribbage nickname?" after my last post, but I thought I could slip it past all of you.  My bad.  :)  Currently my nickname is Kirs10>19 which would only make sense to you if you played cribbage.  Here's the whole story:

Most of the points you score in cribbage are from the points you get in your hand or the crib (the dealer's second hand).  You get points for cards that add up to 15, points for pairs or three of a kind, runs (straights), flushes, etc.  In the cribbage scoring system, however, it is impossible to get a score of 19.  You can get 18 or 20, but there is no combination that will give you 19.  So if you happen to get a hand that has no points, the euphamism is to say that it's a 19-point hand.

When I started playing with the group on a regular basis and needed a nickname, I used to get a lot of 19-point hands, so my nickname became Kirsten19.  The number 31 is also prominent in cribbage, although in a good way, and another (former) player affixed 31 to the end of his name, so it followed a pattern.

As I got better at playing the game it was decided that I had outgrown Kirsten19 and needed a new moniker.  A co-worker noticed that the number '10' was a part of my name, and that 10 points is better (greater) than 19 in cribbage, hence Kirs10>19.

One of the players in the games writes up a summary after the weekly games, and he has proclaimed that I need ANOTHER new name, because Kirs10>19 is too difficult to type.  Boo-hoo.  :þ  If a new nickname comes to me I'll make the switch, but for now he's going to have to live with it.

For the record, the other players are:

Tall Ship Taylor
Cool Hand Kristina
The Mighty Joe Roberts
The Contessa of Cribbage
Brian the Bold
Rajiv the Tiger
No-Show Bobby

Victory is mine!

I finally won! 

Once a week a group of my co-workers gets together to play cribbage in the Royal Hall of Cribbage (also known as the Rainier Conference Room).  There is a cribbage cup that can be won by beating the current holder of the cup to a head-to-head game.  Challenges don't happen every week - sometimes there are just friendly games - but this week I decided to go for it.  I had challenged for the cup on two previous occations but had come up short in the best-of-three format.  I felt that the third time would be the charm, and I was right.

I challenged The Contessa of Cribbage (we all have nicknames) to a duel, and she accepted.  Both games were quite close, but I managed to pull away at the end each time, winning by about 10 points in both games.  Yeah!

Hopefully I'll get to hold on to the cup for a couple of weeks.  It's never been on the west side of our building, so I'm thinking it wants to stay over here for a while.

The Cribbage Cup, crafted by Tall Ship Taylor: