Just Cribbage has always been the classic two-handed game. Six cards, the crib, peg to 31, first to 121, nothing bolted on. That is not changing, and it is not going to.
But cribbage is a much older and much wider family than the version most of us grew up on. If you have ever been the third person at a table built for two, or the fourth, you already know the game has answers for that. The Learning menu just never said a word about them.
So I am adding a new section to it. Variants: a proper write-up of how the rest of the family actually plays, in the same style as the rest of the Academy. Real rules, cross-checked against several sources, no folklore, and interactive checks graded by the game's own scoring engine rather than by an answer key I typed in by hand.
Let me set the expectation rather than let it set itself: these are lessons, not new game modes. They teach you enough to sit down at a real table with real people and know exactly what you are doing. The game you play against the Alley stays two-handed. Whether that changes for one of these is the question at the bottom of this post, and it is a real question.
All seven arrive together. There is no drip feed and no first two and rest to follow — the section lands complete.
More seats at the table
Three-Handed, or Cutthroat. Every player for themselves, and the first peg home wins alone. Five cards each instead of six, and one card into the crib instead of two. Three tosses only make three cards, so the dealer turns one more off the top of the deck, face-down, to finish the crib — which means nobody at that table has seen all of it, including the dealer. The Go rule grows a wrinkle worth knowing cold. Pairing gets genuinely more dangerous with a third hand live, because the card that comes back over the top of your pair is worth six. And your crib only visits you every third deal, so the road to 121 runs longer and leaner than you expect.
Four-Handed, the partnership game. Two teams of two, partners sitting across from each other, both of you pegging on one shared line. Five cards each, one toss each, and four tosses fill the crib with no help from the deck. The crib belongs to the dealer's team and the deal rotates left, so it changes teams every hand — the same alternating heartbeat you already know from heads-up, just at one card per player. Sixteen cards in the play means longer counts and more runs. Five hands get counted every single deal instead of three, so the race to 121 runs hot and the endgame arithmetic arrives sooner than instinct expects. And there is not one word of table talk allowed. Your cards are the only signal you are permitted to send — and every point your partner pegs lands on your line anyway.
Captain's. The other well-known answer for three players, and a stranger one: instead of every player for themselves, one captain plays alone against a partnership of two. The pair work as a team, the captain works alone, and the game feels nothing like the cutthroat version even though the same three people are sitting in the same three chairs. How the scoring is split is one of the things that genuinely varies from table to table, and the lesson says so rather than pretending otherwise.
A different deal
Five-Card. The original — the game Sir John Suckling would actually recognise. Five cards dealt, throw two, three-card hands, game to 61, and the non-dealer pegs three for last before a single card is played, to balance the deal. Three-card hands score small and the finish line comes at you fast, which makes every discard matter more than it does in the six-card game, not less.
Seven-Card. Seven dealt, throw two, five-card hands, and a long, long road to 151. Bigger hands, bigger counts, and a game that rewards patience in a way the short forms never ask for.
A different goal
Lowball, or Losing Cribbage. The mirror game: the first peg to 121 loses. Every score is compulsory, so his heels lands on the dealer whether he wants it or not and the Go point lands on whoever laid the last card. A hand worth nothing at all becomes the thing you dream about, and the famous nineteen hand stops being a joke and starts being the goal.
Speedo. One rule changed, and the whole discard turns inside out: the dealer gets to see the pone's discards before choosing their own toss, right up until somebody crosses the skunk line. Everything you know about feeding and balking a crib has to be rethought from the dealer's side, and then thought about all over again from the pone's, knowing the dealer is watching.
The part I need you for
Everything above is knowledge. Lessons. But at least one of these could be built into the game as something you can genuinely sit down and play.
Lowball is the obvious first candidate to my eye, because it is still two-handed. The scoring engine would not have to change at all — the Alley would simply have to want the exact opposite of what it wants now, which is a smaller change than it sounds and a far stranger game than it sounds. But I would rather ask than assume, and I have been wrong before about what people actually want.
There is a discussion thread in the Just Cribbage community hub: "Which cribbage variant should become a playable mode?"
Vote for the variant you want built Go tell me which one you would really play, and why.
And if your table plays any of these differently than I have described it above, that is exactly the sort of thing I want to hear before the lessons ship rather than after. Cribbage has an enormous number of perfectly legitimate kitchen-table forms. The three-handed crib alone gets dealt at least two different ways depending on whose kitchen you are in. I would much rather say so in the copy than pretend there is only one right way to do it.
When the store page went up I asked what people wanted from a PC cribbage game, and playing with more than two people came back more than anything else. So this section exists because you asked for it. Which part of it becomes a real mode should work the same way.
Thanks, as always, for playing.
— Nathan, Five Cats Game Studios
This is a one person game, so I read all of it.