The best hand in the game
The perfect 29.
Three fives and a jack in your hand — then the dealer cuts the one card in the deck that completes it: the fifth five, matching your jack's suit.
gold outline = the cut card
Counting all 29 points
It looks like an odd little hand until you count it. Four fives make fifteens in every direction, the jack pairs with each five for more, and the matching suit adds the final point of nobs:
Eight separate fifteens at 2 points each, six pairs from the four fives, and one for the jack. Nothing scores higher — and famously, nothing scores 19, 25, 26, or 27 either. A zero-point hand is called a "nineteen hand" for exactly that reason.
How rare is it?
In traditional six-card cribbage — where you're dealt six and choose which four to keep — the odds of ending up with a perfect 29 are about 1 in 216,580 hands. Play a few hands a night and you could go a lifetime without seeing one; serious league players might witness one or two, ever.
The near-miss is the 28 hand: four fives plus any ten, jack, queen, or king — same eight fifteens, same twelve for the quad, just missing the nobs point. Still a hand people frame.
Here, a perfect 29 pays 5000:1
In Casino Cribbage the crib is its own side bet — your two discards, the dealer's two, and the cut card form a five-card hand that pays purely on its score. Hit a 29 crib and the bonus pays 5000:1.
Even without the jackpot, any crib of 9 points or better pays something, from 2:1 up through 500:1. The full ladder is on the rules page.
Worth knowing: chasing the perfect crib is a thrill, not a strategy — your main bet rides on your own four cards, so keep your hand strong and let the crib surprise you. When it hits, it really hits.