Ruling — Cribbage

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cribbagebg-2398-en-1e

The method of playing is as follows:

1. The crib is laid out and the starter is cut.[1]

2. The pone begins by playing any card he pleases, laying it face upward on his side of the cribbage board and announcing its pip value (e.g., two, five, or ten).[1]

3. The dealer plays a card from his hand, laying it face upward on the dealer's side of the board and calling out the total value of the two cards taken together.[1]

4. The pone lays another card face upward on top of the first card (without turning it face down) and announces the total pip value of the three cards played.[1]

5. The dealer plays again, and players continue to play single cards in turn, announcing the cumulative value (the count).[1][2]

6. Each played card should be positioned to overlap the player's previously played cards while keeping all cards visible.[3]

7. A player must not play a card that causes the total pip value to pass 3/1.[1]

8. If a player has no card they can play without exceeding 31, they must say "Go" to their adversary.[4]

9. If a player is told to "Go," they must play as many cards as they can without passing 31.[4]

10. If a player's adversary has no cards left, the player must say "go" to themselves.[4]

11. If a "go" occurs, the cards are turned down, and the player whose turn it is to play begins again with their remaining cards, announcing the face value of the first card, and the adversary plays after them until cards are exhausted or another 31 is reached.[4]

12. Played cards are not turned over until all cards of both players are played and the hands are counted and pegged.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) · p.7 · K♠ J♡ 5♠

[2] RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) · p.31 · 6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play

[3] RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) · p.32 · 7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring

[4] RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) · p.10 · Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠

Settled. Play on.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 124 ms · ask 5366 ms · total 5491 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5491 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 32, "score": 0.04646, "snippet": "Each played card shall be positioned so as to overlap that player's previously played cards while keeping the identity of all cards visible. Played cards shall not be turned over before all cards of both players are played and the hands counted and pegged. A single card released by the fingers is co", "headingPath": "7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.044771, "snippet": "If the qualifying round has a cut-for-deal format, the pack is cut to determine which player deals first in the game; the low card wins. If the qualifying round has alternate-deal format, there is no cut to determine the first dealer. In an alternate-deal situation, the tournament director must anno", "headingPath": "1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.044475, "snippet": "If the dealer plays a card before pegging the two points, the dealer forfeits them. After the starter card has been turned, the deck must be placed on the dealer's side of the board. The play of the cards starts immediately after the turn of the starter card. The pone shall play the first card face ", "headingPath": "6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.041882, "snippet": "count sequence. 'Go' should be called verbally, not gestured. Points are scored during this play of the cards (see scoring chart in rule 1.7). When both players have played all their cards, the pone's hand is counted and pegged by the pone (see scoring chart). The dealer then does the same for the d", "headingPath": "1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.040258, "snippet": "A standard pack of 52 playing cards is used. (Jokers are discarded.) The four suits are considered equal. The rank and value of the cards are as follows: | card | K | Q | J | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | A | | value | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | The cribbage board", "headingPath": "1.3. The Cards · 1.4. The Cribbage Board · 1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.038291, "snippet": "7.1. The order of play 7.2. Scoring 7.3. Renege 7.4. Incorrect announcements 8.1. Recording score on board 8.2. Zero hand or crib 8.3. Pegging incorrectly to the player's disadvantage 8.4. Pegging incorrectly to the player's advantage 8.5. Improperly removing pegs 8.6. Etiquette in touching pegs 8.7", "headingPath": "Rule 7. The Play 30 · Rule 8. Pegging 35", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.035673, "snippet": "In the first deal of the game, once the deck has been cut and dealing begins, it is assumed the cut for deal was made and play continues. After the cards are shuffled and cut, the dealer distributes one card at a time, face down from the top of the pack alternately to each player, starting with the ", "headingPath": "4.1. Order of Dealing · 4.2. Dealing the Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Of these two discards, that of the 10 and 6 is better than the 10 and 9, because the 10 and 9 might help to form a sequence in the adversary's crib, whereas the 10 and 6 are so far apart that they are very unlikely to be of any use. Cards which are likely to form parts of sequences are called close ", "headingPath": "K♠ J♡ 5♠", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "K♠ J♡ 5♠", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}, {"page": 31, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 32, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 151 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 151 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90699 of 1301 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 01:18 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring	p.32	0.04646 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.12	0.044771 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play	p.31	0.044475 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.13	0.041882 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.3. The Cards · 1.4. The Cribbage Board · 1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.11	0.040258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	Rule 7. The Play 30 · Rule 8. Pegging 35	p.4	0.038291 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	4.1. Order of Dealing · 4.2. Dealing the Cards	p.20	0.035673 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	K♠ J♡ 5♠	p.7	0.029877 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	K♠ J♡ 5♠	p.7	#8	0.029877 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	guaranteed a slot by the base-rulebook floor
#2	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠	p.11	#15	0.028034 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠	p.13	#18	0.027237 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring	p.32	#1	0.04646 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠	p.10	#10	0.029551 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	SOLITAIRE CRIBBAGE.	p.15	#19	0.026709 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play	p.31	#3	0.044475 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)		p.12	#14	0.028158 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	K♠ J♡ 5♠	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play	p.31	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	7.1. The Order of Play · 7.2. Scoring	p.32	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	Q♠ J♣ J♠ 10♣ A♠	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 124 ms · first delta 3419 ms · total 5491 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 124 ms · ask 5366 ms · gateway work 5491 ms · total 5491 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3356
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 406
tok/sec: 202.4 tok/sec — 406 output tokens in 2.006 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 8s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 73), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.