cribbage

Michael (another UCSB guy, good friend of mine) taught me how to play cribbage last year.  Kind of a fun game, actually.  Usually we'll end up playing a game over lunch, or for an afternoon coffee break, or something like that.  After the first month or so of learning how to play (and getting soundly trounced a few times), I started to be able to hold my own against Michael.  Seeing the way we play, one of the UCSB postdocs wondered if there was any real strategy involved in the game.  If there was a way to consistently be better than your opponent.  Or if the game was just a toss-up.

So, being physicists, we decided to test this out.  Since January, Michael and I have been playing pretty regularly, and (geeks that we are) we started keeping score.  In graph form, no less.  I figure we've gone on for a while, so there's no real harm in posting things now and showing how we've been doing (I also didn't want to jinx myself by talking about it in the middle of a big winning streak).  If you're curious, take a look here and see how I'm doing against Michael.  Currently, it's a coin flip, right?

Comments

[Lucinda]

Geek doesn't even being to describe....
Then again, I consider myself
Workaholic
Overachieving
Nerd
Geek

From one geek to another...I would totally graph & test that hypothesis too.

[Audrey]

Unrelated to cribbage: Get healthy again! Come back to TKD, because I miss you.

Related to cribbage: I don't remember how it's played. Is there chance involved, or could you (theoretically) make a game tree?

[Kevin]

While you're at it... Could you also track correlation between dealing the first hand (and therefore holding the first crib) and winning?

I'd be very interested.

[Shana]

I learned to play cribbage once. It was a very long time ago and I really don't remember much other than the peg board you keep score on. But I did well. Could have been beginner's luck....or maybe the fact that I was more than slightly inebriated at the time - who knows. No graph of the results.

More recently, I had a kick butt game of Chutes and Ladders with some friends on Tuesday night. I had the kid that looks like Peter Brady. No win for me though, one too many chutes.

Hope you are feeling better. See you Friday!

[Aaron]

"Currently, it's a coin flip, right?"

Actually, judging from the error bars, it looks like you're a 'significantly' better player. But hey... what's a few percentage points among friends? ;)

[T]

looks like it's converging to 2-to-3 to more than 3 standard deviations from 1-to-1. doesn't seem like a coin toss anymore, unless it's a weighted coin...