History of Cribbage

The beginning of Cribbage, or simply Crib, is attributed to Sir John Suckling. Sir John is a known card expert, a womanizer and witty individual besides being a good poet. His most infamous act started when he disseminated huge amount of decks of marked cards to the aristocracies in England. Subsequently, he traveled across the country playing cribbage with the local people wherein he earned a substantial amount of money. In 1642, his life went on a downfall due to his alleged involvement in a scheme to release the Earl of Stafford from the London Tower. In order to get away from such outcome, Sir John went to Paris and ended his own life by drinking a poison at age 32.

There's no concrete proof that Suckling was the developer of Cribbage and it is seemingly similar to an earlier form known as Noddy, of which the rules remains unclear.

Tradition puts the invention of cribbage in the year 1632. The account at the Oxford English Dictionary puts its invention in 1630, the year when John Suckling became a knight. However, it is seemingly possible that Sir John enhanced and codified the rules of Cribbage and, whatever its origin, he certainly utilized his associates to advertise and proliferate the game throughout the country. The game of Cribbage is characterized by elegance and provides enjoyment as a pastime with just the appropriate mix of skill and chance. Learning the game is not difficult and may take some time to master which is probably the reason why people were so enthusiastic to learn and why the game endured.

The lone card game that are legitimate money games played in pubs of England, Cribbage requires the use of a score board which seems older in existence than the game of Cribbage itself and may have originated from the boards of similar games played during the ancient times where the games of backgammon and mancala originated. The scoring board is not exclusive for cribbage. In fact, there are other pub games which utilize similar board for scoring. From England, cribbage has now spanned across the globe.

To this day, cribbage stands out as one of the most popular card games and remains to be played throughout British pubs. The world championships of domino and cribbage is an event which was spearheaded by Keith Masters and was initially played in Trent and since 1985 has been held annually.