Cribbage Board Gifts: 2 Track, 3 Track and 4 Player Boards

Choose a cribbage board by how many people will play. A 2 track board suits couples and two-player games, a 3 track board lets three people each peg their own score, and four players can share a 2 track board as partners or use a 4 track board. Every standard board runs to 121 holes.

Cribbage boards by number of players

The number of tracks is the first thing to check on any listing, since each player or team pegs on its own track. Hole count comes next: a full game is played to 121, and Wikipedia notes that a continuous 120-hole board also works for the shorter game to 61.

Pagat’s rules say three players deal five cards each and one to the crib, and score on a three-track board. Four players sit with partners opposite each other, so two tracks are enough unless everyone wants a peg of their own.

How a cribbage board keeps score

Each player has two pegs. You move the rear peg ahead of the front one by the points you score, so the gap between them always shows your last score. That makes it easy for an opponent to check your count.

Pagat describes the layout as holes 1 to 120 for each player, with the winner being the first to go past 120. The American Cribbage Congress calls hole 121 the game hole and hole 120 the dead hole. Wikipedia describes the classic board as two sets of 60 holes in five-point sections, and each 30-point division of the board is called a street.

Which board do tournament players use?

Sanctioned American Cribbage Congress play uses a long board with 60 holes up and 60 holes down, according to its 2025 rulebook. Give a long board to someone who has started going to club nights or cribbage events.

The same rulebook defines a skunk as winning by 31 or more points, with the stink hole at 90.

Wooden and folding cribbage boards as gifts

Wooden cribbage boards are the usual gift. The University Games Front Porch Classics board is a 14.75-inch solid wood board with 3 track scoring, nine metal pegs in gold, silver and black, a deck of cards and rules for seven variations, for two to four players.

Folding boards close over a storage space for cards and pegs, which suits a cabin, a boat or a camping box. A continuous track board, with rows of 120 holes, avoids the turn at the end of the board. Board shape is a matter of taste: the 29 board is cut like the number 29, the highest possible hand score.

Where the game of cribbage comes from

Cribbage is a card game first, and the board is its scorekeeper. Wikipedia cites the 17th-century writer John Aubrey, who credited the poet Sir John Suckling with creating the game in the early 1600s from an older game called noddy.

In the United States, Drueke of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is one of the best-known names on older boards. The World Chess Hall of Fame says the company was founded in 1914, made cribbage boards after World War I, and made only chess sets and cribbage boards until 1935. The family sold the business in 1986, and Carrom later continued the sets, so a Drueke board is often a vintage find rather than a new one.

What else to pair with a cribbage board

A cribbage board makes a fuller gift with a deck of good cards and a few spare pegs, since pegs are small and easy to lose. A player who enjoys short card games may also like the small boxed games in our stocking-size card games guide.

For more traditional games, classic board games covers the deluxe editions of family favorites, and the classic board game gifts section gathers our cribbage, backgammon, Clue and Monopoly pages.