Cribbage Hand Score Calculator

What This Calculator Solves

Cribbage scoring rewards more than just the cards you're holding — it rewards every combination hidden inside them. A single hand can score points for fifteens, pairs, runs, a flush, and "his nobs" all at once, and a card can count toward several of those categories at the same time. Working it out by hand means checking every possible subset of your five cards (the four in your hand plus the starter card turned up after the cut), which is easy to get wrong under pressure at the table or when you're still learning to count. This tool runs the full check for you and shows exactly where every point came from.

What You Need Before You Start

• Your 4-card hand — the cards you kept after the discard to the crib.
• The starter (cut) card — the card turned up on top of the deck after the cut, which counts as a fifth card for scoring purposes only.
• All five cards must be distinct — a real deck has only one of each rank-and-suit combination, so the calculator will flag it if you accidentally pick the same card twice.

The Logic Behind the Scoring

Fifteens: every combination of two or more of the five cards whose point values add up to exactly 15 scores 2 points, using A=1, number cards at face value, and J/Q/K worth 10 each — the calculator checks all 26 possible combinations of two, three, four, and five cards. Pairs: every two cards of matching rank score 2 points, which is why three of a kind is worth 6 (three separate pairs) and four of a kind is worth 12 (six separate pairs). Runs: three or more cards in consecutive rank order score one point per card, and a duplicated rank inside a run multiplies it — a hand with two 5s alongside a 4, 6, and 7 doesn't score one run of five, it scores two separate runs of four (8 points), because each 5 forms its own complete sequence. Flush: if all four cards in your hand share a suit, that's 4 points, and if the starter card matches too, it becomes 5. His nobs: if your hand contains the jack matching the starter's suit, that's an extra point, regardless of any other jack in play.

A Few Things Worth Knowing

This calculator scores a hand exactly as it would count during the show — it does not score a crib, which follows a stricter flush rule (a crib flush requires all five cards, including the starter, to match; four matching cards in the crib alone score nothing). It also doesn't handle pegging points earned during play, only the hand count after the cards are laid down. The highest possible hand score in cribbage is 29, and the lowest is 0 — traditionally called "a nineteen hand," since nineteen just so happens to be the one score that's mathematically impossible to make with any five-card combination.