My 29-point hand - a first for me!

iPhone Crib Game - my 29-point hand

I have played cribbage for many years.  I think my dad taught me back when I was a teenager, although I don't remember playing any games with him until I was married with children.  I do, however, remember a rainy day in the dorm at college when I played 7 games in a row and my opponent tore up my deck because I skunked him on many of those games.

I have played thousands of games over the years and maybe have had 40,000 or 50,000 hands.  In all of those games, I have never gotten a 29-point hand, until today.  The math says the chance of getting a 29-point hand is 1 : 216,580.  That sounds atrocious, but it's a lot better than the chance of winning the 6/49 jackpot, which is around 1:14,000,000.  

So really, I am way ahead of the curve.  Instead of taking over 200,000 hands to win, I did it in a mere 40,000.  That's 5x better than the average.  If I apply those odds to the lottery, I could play the 6/49 only 2,800,000 times to win.  At $3 a hit, that's $84,000,000.  And if you include interest lost from saving the money instead, it could be hundreds of millions, easily.

I think I will just thank the universe that I managed to achieve this rare milestone and not had to empty out my bank account to do it.  After all, it's free (well, the card game cost me $3 - the same price as a lottery ticket).  And just think, I could do it again in another 50 years or so.  I am looking forward to that.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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