Always Consider All of Your Pegging Options

I had a hand recently come up at Grass Roots club last week (shameless plug: Thursday nights in Lake Worth, we're always looking for new members!) that reminded me the importance of always considering every option available, even when the cards seem obvious.

It was early on in the game, I had the deal and was ahead 50-44. I was dealt a beauty of a hand, 2-4-6-7-J-Q rainbow. My opponent discarded quick, so either he had a nice hand, or he was throwing me garbage, so I tossed the Q-J in hopes to cut to 8 in the crib. Fortunately, I cut a deuce, and my 2 point hand went to 8.

My opponent leads a K. I played the 7 to make it 17, and my opponent played a J to make it 27.

What do we know about this hand?

Well, for starters, I likely do not have much of a crib. I'm holding 2-4-6 with the count 27, and my opponent has K-J on his board. I'm looking to play a bit of offense now because I'm concerned about being way short of 70 if I catch a bad hand next deal. I now have one of two options:

1. I can play the 4 for 31 and take two points. I'm then left with 2-6, and I'm likely not to make any extra points except for my last card, so it's pretty much a guaranteed 3 points.
2. I can take a risk, and play the 2 for 29. I already know of two deuces out, and with K-J showing, it's quite unlikely for my opponent to have the deuce. He might have A-A, but that is a small risk, and even then, he's only holding 2 points, and not threatening position. I'd actually put this at less than 1% probability, so I'm not even going to factor it into my calculations.

However, here's the fun part of playing the 2 for 29. I'm left holding 6-4, and my opponent is likely to have at least one 5, if not two. This is one of the classic 5 traps, in somewhat of an unorthodox manner. If he avoids it by leading the 5 and only has one, I only give up 1 point by playing the two, but if he does end up playing the 5 last, I pick up 5 points total instead of 3 (the initial go, a run of 3 on the end, and last card). This means that in order to be a net-point positive play, I only need to be able to achieve this 1 out of 3 times.

I did play the 2 for 29, and got a go. My opponent lead a 5, which was slightly disappointing, until he played his second 5, and I picked up the 4 point play on the end.

Of course, this is a wild play, and you'll get lots of stares from kibitzers who see you pass the 31, but it's a good reminder to those of you out there who'd take the 31 for 2 without at least considering the rest of the hand.