Three Levels of Thinking in Cribbage

As many of you who play other card games know, you can pull many tricks and approaches from other card games and apply them to cribbage. Poker seems to lend itself especially well to other games, and cribbage is no exception. There's a concept in poker called "Levels of Thinking." It has to do with how deeply you are analysing the situation. There are generally three accepted levels of thinking; let's look through each of them.

First Level: Thinking About Your Hand

This is where beginners start with the game of cribbage (as well as many games). They focus on being able to count their hand, and how they can make points with pegging, with not much regards to what their opponent has. Before you can advance from this level to the next, you need to be able to score your own hand once the cut card is cut fairly quickly, and you need to be able to recognize the correct discard in the basic hands.

Second Level: Thinking About Your Opponent's Hand

Once you're able to discard and score your hand without thinking too much, you'll be able to use that spare brain power to start discerning your opponent's hand. I would actually break this level into two sublevels. The first part is learning to be able to figure out what your opponent doesn't have. For example, if the count's 27 and your opponent says go, you can play knowing he doesn't have a 4 or less. Once you're able to figure that out, you'll start learning the second sublevel, what your opponent does have. Another example would be when your opponent has played 3-7-7; you can generally assume that they're either holding the 8, 7 or 5 (or very little points). When you see the pegging develop, you'll start being able to determine more and more hands, and that will help you determine what you need to play.

Third Level: Thinking About What Your Opponent Thinks You Have

This is where the fun part of cribbage really begins. Once you've reached the third level of thinking, you'll start playing your hand to disguise it from your opponent, or at the very least leave options open on what cards you could be holding.

The classic example of this is the flush fake. The flush fake occurs when you have three cards of the same suit, and one card of a different suit. If you play the three suited cards first, your opponent will figure you for a flush (or at the very least, have to consider the 10 cards you may be holding for the flush). As in poker, the less information your opponent has, the better the advantage you hold over him.

Mixing up your leads will also help you disguise your hands from your opponents. One such example is with A-4-T-J. Many players will lead with the four here, and I will the majority of the time as well. However, there are times I will lead the ace, as leading the ace ends up looking like either I have two aces, or I have something like A-5-5-9.

What does this all mean?

There's only one thing you have to worry about in regards to levels:

Always be thinking one level above your opponent.

When you think about this from a practical view, this makes perfect sense. Players playing new players tend to overthink and overplay their hands, and get themselves in trouble. Likewise, if your opponent is thinking about your hand, you want to be trying to deceive him and give him problems with his thinking.

Keep one level above your opponent, and you'll likely keep your pegs in front of theirs too.