What Is the Best Hand in Cribbage?

The best hand in cribbage is 29, the highest score a hand plus its starter card can count. The hand is three 5s and a jack, with the starter turning up the fourth 5 in the same suit as the jack. Best, highest and perfect hand all name the same 29, and the second-highest hand is 28.

What are the highest possible cribbage hands?

The three highest possible hand totals in cribbage are 29, 28 and 24, and each takes a specific set of cards:

The nine layouts that reach 24 split into just two shapes. Five are double-double runs (a run of three with two of its ranks paired) making four fifteens each, and the other four are four-of-a-kind hands making six fifteens.

The full point-by-point count of the 29, its odds, and the near-miss 28 live on the twenty-nine hand page. Or try the 29 yourself in the hand calculator, which counts any hand you give it.

"Perfect hand" is a specific name for the 29, not a loose compliment. Bicycle's rules headline it as a perfect 29, and the American Cribbage Congress pays its members a $100 award for a perfect 29 hand, with lapel pins for 28s and 29s.

Why does no hand score between 24 and 28?

The complete list of totals a cribbage hand can reach runs 0 through 18, then 20 through 24, then jumps straight to 28 and 29. No hand lands on 19, 25, 26 or 27, which is why the third-highest hand is 24, not 27.

Nothing in the rules forbids the missing totals; they simply never occur. Score all 12,994,800 combinations of four held cards plus a starter and none of them counts 25, 26 or 27. The American Cribbage Congress glossary records the same set of possible totals.

Is there a 30-point hand in cribbage?

No; the possible totals stop at 29, and the deal that convinces people otherwise actually makes 28. Hold all four 5s with a jack turned up as the starter, and the hand counts 28, not 29 and not 30. Nobs requires the jack to be held in your hand, not sitting on the deck as the starter.

The dealer does peg 2 for his heels when a jack is cut, but that is a pegging score marked before the play, never part of the hand count. Wikipedia's cribbage-statistics article nicknames the dealer's 30 points from that deal a "Dealer's 30"; the hand inside it is still a 28. As for why 29 itself is the ceiling, every scoring source in the layout is already at its maximum, and the twenty-nine hand page walks through it.

Is a 19-point hand possible?

No hand can count exactly 19, and its impossibility works differently from 30's. Totals of 30 and up sit above the ceiling entirely, while 19 is a hole inside the range, with 18 and 20 both reachable either side of it. By long-standing table usage, announcing "a nineteen hand" means a hand worth zero; the nineteen hand page covers the nickname and the other impossible totals.

Can the crib score 29?

Yes, and you get there from the counting rules rather than from a printed rule. The crib counts with the same combinations as a hand (how to score a hand runs through them). The American Cribbage Congress glossary gives the nobs point to whoever holds the jack, hand or crib. The crib's one difference, that its flush must run all five cards, changes nothing here, because the 29 layout contains no flush.

So a crib of three 5s and a jack, with the matching fourth 5 cut, counts the same 29. Re-score every possible crib plus starter under crib rules and the attainable totals come out identical to a hand's: 0–18, 20–24, 28 and 29. None of the sources we checked publishes odds for a 29 crib.

What are the highest four cards on their own?

The highest four cards on their own are the four 5s, which count 20 before the starter arrives. The 5-5-5 combinations make fifteen four different ways for 8 points, and the four of a kind adds 12 more. Only the four 5s reach 20; no other four-card holding beats it.

No rulebook publishes a four-card maximum, so treat this as derived rather than quoted. Score every possible four-card holding under the show rules, with no starter and no nobs, and nothing tops the four 5s.

How rare are the highest hands?

Out of all 12,994,800 possible combinations of a held hand and a starter, the big scores barely exist. The counts below are published in Wikipedia's cribbage-statistics article, and we re-scored every combination ourselves and matched them exactly:

Notice the fold in the middle of the table: a 23 or a 22 is rarer than a 24, with 356 and 444 combinations against 3,680. At the other end of the scale, 1,009,008 combinations (about 7.8%) score nothing at all.

The 4 in 12,994,800 for the 29 treats every discard as random. The much shorter odds usually quoted, including the American Cribbage Congress's figure, assume a player dealt three 5s and the matching jack always keeps them. Both framings are correct; they answer different questions.

Is there a best starting hand in cribbage?

There is no official best starting hand. "Best hand" can also mean the best six cards to be dealt, or the best four to keep for the play phase. No rule authority ranks either: the American Cribbage Congress, Bicycle and the card-games reference Pagat all stop short of naming a best deal or a best pegging hand.

The nearest thing in print is the assumption inside the published 29 odds: that a player dealt three 5s and the matching jack keeps them every time. The only "best hand" the rules settle is the highest-scoring one, and that hand counts 29.

By the Nobs Cribbage team Last reviewed 2026-08-09