How to Play Travel Cribbage with 3-4 Players

Sharing our customers’ best ideas for using 2-track boards to play with 3 or 4 players — perfect for traveling and making new friends!

how many people can play on this board? 2?
thanks so much
-rv

Although the typical cribbage board has 2 tracks, tabletop boards often come with 3 or 4 tracks for playing with 3 or 4 players. But in a pinch, you can make any 2-track cribbage board — like our Travel Cribbage Board — work for 3 or 4 players. Here’s how:

3-player cribbage on a 2-track board

Customer Kaylie shared with us her family secret for using 2 tracks for 3 players: the third player plays the course backwards. The 3rd player uses a unique set of pegs, starts at the finish hole and ends at the start hole. 

Kaylie says that, in the rare event that two players need to share the same hole (say, player 2 and player 3), the 3rd player just hopscotches tracks to player 1’s track for that pegging, then goes right back.

The third set of pegs may have to be MacGyvered to look distinct from the other pegs, such as toothpicks, matchsticks, pushpins, or kindling slivers.

However, what some other customers have done with Walnut Studiolo’s Travel Cribbage Board is to order the Travel Cribbage Board with Cast Pegs (which has a larger storage tube), and then add-on an extra set of Wire Cribbage Pegs. The wire pegs look distinct from the cast pegs (particularly the red set!) and they are skinny enough to fit inside the same storage tube.

Kaylie says though it may not be perfect, they’ve been doing it this way in her family since she was a kid!

3-player travel cribbage boards

For families that are traveling with 3 players, we designed a 3-track travel cribbage board! Check out our new Travel Cribbage Board designs, two sizes with 3-tracks and 6 pegs:

4-player cribbage on a 2-track board

4 players is even more straightforward on a 2-track board: the players simply play as teams, with 2 people on each team. Each player pegs his own points using the team’s pegs.

Cribbage rules of play for 3-4 players

For the actual card play, there is really only a small change to the number of cards dealt, and the number of cards discarded to the crib per hand.

For 3 players: deal 5 cards to each player (instead of 6) and 1 card face-down to the table for the dealer’s crib. Each player then discards 1 card to the crib instead of 2, for a total of 4 cards in the crib (1 from each of 3 players + 1 dealt facedown).

For 4 players: deal 5 cards to each player (instead of 6). Each player then discards 1 card to the crib instead of 2, for a total of 4 cards in crib (1 from each of 4 players).

Check out our house cribbage rules for concise game rules on how to play cribbage.

Walnut Studiolo’s Handmade Cribbage Boards

Our unique, one-of-a-kind cribbage boards make great gifts, can be personalized with monograms, special dates, or love letters, and are all design and handmade in our workshop on the Oregon Coast.

Check out our full collection of wildly original cribbage boards, from a cribbage board belt, to driftwood originals, to our ever-popular Travel Cribbage Board!

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