Cribbage JD 4+

I only play the computer. The randomness of the cards seems much much better than the other free cribbage app I was using. After playing a few hundred times this past year I’ve decided the hands do not repeat to any annoying degree as was the case on the other app. That said, I still detect a predictability somewhere in this game. In hands where you must make the choice between being conservative/defensive or more daring/hopeful as to cards put into opponent’s crib, being daring plays into what seems (too often) to be a setup for the opponent getting ahead. By saying “setup”, I am imagining there is a bias in the program that punishes risky crib contributions. 5 point crib flush has never happened either for or against, which is unnatural in my estimation, so I’ve learned to ignore the possible outcome from a same suit crib contribution. Conservative solid play is how to get ahead in the stats with this cribbage app. It’s teaching good habits.

Overall, I like this game as it has a good design and relatively quick pace. A few issues have knocked it down a few stars for me.
1) The game force wait time with ‘Go’. I don’t need to wait a couple seconds for it to happen. Also make it more noticeable on screen.
2) Playing online against people, I never want to play with their chosen board. Some are ok, but others are difficult to see. I’d like an option to only play with the board of my choice for my screen.
3) Card distribution. Over the course of thousands of hands, it will balance out but on a game by game or hand by hand basis, it’s laughable. There’s something off with the array shuffle algorithm or the random seed. Statistically, too many 3/4 of a kind and 5/6 card straights dealt in hands each game to be realistic. Looking at Cribbage hand distribution charts shows it’s just not going to happen every other game like this. The point at which I stopped taking it seriously was playing online and someone had 3 straight 20+ point hands (excluding peg/crib).

Near perfect mobile cribbage game.

I love the ability to see the best cards to throw for a given hand, and the breakdown with minimum, maximum, average, and crib average. It might be nice if the “score” wasn’t based on the rank of options (100 for best choice, 93 for second best), but rather a comparison of the total average. For example, if the #1 option averages 5.06 points, and what I chose averages 4.98 points, I think that should be scored somewhere around 98% for how close it is to maximal, rather than the 93 is would currently get for being the second best option. It’s a small unimportant change, but I think it makes more sense.