[1] Cribbage has several distinctive features: the cribbage board used for score-keeping; the crib, box, or kitty (in parts of Canada and New England);[citation needed] two distinct scoring stages; and a unique scoring system, including points for groups of cards that total 15.

It has been characterized as "Britain's national card game" and the only one legally playable in licensed pubs and clubs without requiring local authority permission.

[2] The game has relatively few rules yet many subtleties, which accounts for its ongoing appeal and popularity.

A game may be decided by a single point, and the edge often goes to an experienced player who utilizes strategy, including calculating odds and making decisions based on the relative positions of players on the board.

Both cribbage and its close relative costly colours are descended from the old English card game of noddy.

Cribbage added the distinctive feature of a crib and changed the scoring system for points, whereas costly colours added more combinations but retained the original noddy scoring scheme.

[4] The objective of the game is to be the first player to score a target number of points, typically 61 or 121.

[8] The continuing popularity of cribbage is due in some part to the influence of the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, who depicted the game in his novel The Old Curiosity Shop.

The wardroom of the oldest active submarine in the United States Pacific Fleet carries on board the personal cribbage board of World War II submarine commander and Medal of Honor recipient Rear Admiral Dick O'Kane, and upon the boat's decommissioning, the board is transferred to the next oldest boat.

In the case of three players, a single card is dealt face down in the centre of the table to start the crib.

The player on the dealer's left or, in a two-player game, the pone, cuts the remaining pack.

[16] Once the play is complete, each player in turn, starting with the player on the left of the dealer, displays their own hand on the table and scores points based on its content in conjunction with the starter card.

Double and triple skunks are not included in the official rules of cribbage play and are optional.

Costly colours may have developed separately from noddy, as it retains several original features that are no longer part of cribbage.

What is new is that deuces play a similar role to jacks and that players may score for colours—i.e., having three or four cards of the same suit or colour.