What is a 29 hand in cribbage?

A 29 hand is the highest score possible from a single cribbage hand. It is three fives and a jack in your hand, with the fourth five turned as the starter card, and that starter five must match the suit of your jack.

What are the odds of a 29 hand in cribbage?

Starting from a six-card deal in a two-player game, the odds of ending up with a 29 hand are about 1 in 216,580. If you play a card a minute every night, most players go a lifetime without one.

Why can you never score 19 in cribbage?

There is no combination of five cards that adds up to exactly 19 points under the cribbage scoring rules. That is why a hand worth nothing is jokingly called a nineteen hand.

Crib Pegz › The 29 hand

The 29 hand in cribbage

Twenty-nine is the most a cribbage hand can be worth. Most players never see one. It takes three fives and a jack in your hand, the fourth five as the starter card, and the starter five has to be the same suit as your jack. Miss any one of those and you are looking at 28, which is still a hand people talk about for years.

The exact cards

Say you are holding the 5♥ 5♠ 5♣ and the J♦. The only card in the deck that turns that into 29 is the 5♦ — matching the diamond of your jack. Any other five gives you 28.

How the 29 is counted

What you score	Points
Eight different fifteens — four ways to make 5+5+5, and four ways to make jack+5	16
Four of a kind (the four fives)	12
His nobs — the jack matching the starter's suit	1
Total	29

People trip over the sixteen. It is worth counting slowly: with four fives on the table there are four different groups of three fives, each worth fifteen, and four different jack-and-a-five pairs, each worth fifteen. Eight fifteens, two points apiece.

The real odds

In a standard two-player game where you are dealt six cards and throw two away, the chance of finishing with a 29 is roughly 1 in 216,580. For comparison, a 28 hand comes up around 1 in 170,984. Those numbers are why nobody keeps quiet about it when it happens.

And the hand you can never have: there is no way to score exactly 19 in cribbage. No five cards add up to it. That is why a dead hand worth zero gets called a "nineteen hand" — it is a polite way of saying you got nothing.

Other scores worth knowing

28 — four fives and a jack, but the jack's suit does not match the starter. One point short, and somehow worse than 29 by more than one point.
24 — the highest score you will realistically hit more than once. Usually 4-4-5-5 with a six as the starter, or 7-7-8-8 with a six.
0 — more common than any of them.

The 29 Club

We named The 29 Club after this hand. It is where we take on the orders that do not fit the normal shop: custom peg sizes for odd boards, matching sets for a whole crib league, club and tournament runs, and one-off ideas that need a conversation first. If you have actually pegged out a 29, tell us in the application — we want to hear about it.

Matched sets of personalized crib pegs in five colours — Whatever your best hand is, it is easier to remember when the pegs have your name on them.

Pegs worth counting on

Custom crib pegs with your name on them, from $2.50 a peg. Single pegs or full sets.

Design your pegz