Cribbage

Cribbage is a two-player card game with its own pegboard for tracking points. You score in two stages — during play and when you count your hand — earning points for cards that add to 15, pairs, runs, and flushes. The first player to peg 121 points wins. A special twist called the crib is a bonus hand formed from discards. The dealer scores it.

Each hand has three parts. First, the discard — you pick which cards to keep and which go to the crib. Then the play — you take turns putting cards down and scoring combos that hit 15 or 31. Then the show — you count all the scoring combos in your hand with the starter card. Every hand has several decisions worth thinking through.

Cribbage was invented in the early 1630s by Sir John Suckling, an English poet and gambler. He adapted an older game called Noddy. It's one of the few card games where the inventor's name is known for certain — and one of the few still played with its own dedicated board.

It became the go-to game of the British Royal Navy and merchant marine. Sailors brought small wooden cribbage boards on long voyages. Today it's the only card game whose play is legal in English pubs without a gaming license. That odd legal carve-out has kept it alive in village pubs for nearly 400 years.