American Cribbage Congress

Last updated
American Cribbage Congress
FormationMarch 1980 (1980-03)
Founders
  • Joseph P. Wergin
  • Nick Pond
  • James W. Arblaster
  • Arnold C. Crews
  • Bobbie Crews
  • Frank Wise
  • Peter Danielson
  • Thomas Miller
  • George E. Bickford
  • John Chambers
Headquarters Roseburg, Oregon
Location
    • United States
    • Canada
    • Mexico
Membership
6,351 (May 2017) [1]
President
David Campbell [2]
Website www.cribbage.org

The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) was established in March 1980 with the primary goals of promoting the game of cribbage at both the national and local levels in the US and to standardize the rules under which cribbage tournaments were conducted. Secondary goals of the ACC included the recognition that cribbage tournaments should benefit tournament players instead of tournament directors and to establish a points and awards system to reward players.

Contents

The ACC operates on three levels: sanctioned tournaments, local clubs (called "Grass Roots"), and internet tournaments.

The ACC also publishes a monthly newsletter called Cribbage World. As of April 2012, it had a membership of 6,716. [3]

Cribbage tournaments

Cribbage tournaments sanctioned by the ACC are formatted in one-day or two-day durations. Tournaments are generally held on weekends, but can be held on any day of the week. Entry fees are usually required to play: the amount of which vary by tournament. Sanctioned two-day tournaments (and a few one-day tournaments) often have multiple non-sanctioned satellite tournaments.

Tournament game formats can vary by geography, with some areas preferring one game each against multiple opponents with a cut for first deal before each game, one game each against multiple opponents with alternating first deal before each game, or two games each against multiple opponents with alternating first deal before each game.

In every sanctioned ACC tournament, the top 1/4th of finishers qualify for a bracketed knock-out playoff (best 2 of 3 or best 3 of 5 game matches). Each player who qualifies for the playoffs must be given the opportunity to win the tournament they've entered. Players who qualify for playoffs in a sanctioned tournament also receive Master Rating Points (MRP's) which accumulate towards levels of recognition. In addition, players who finish in the top 1/8th of the field receive automatic MRP's.

Every sanctioned ACC tournament must follow the official tournament rules of the American Cribbage Congress and has certified judges on hand to adjudicate any disputes.

One-day tournaments

One-day tournaments will have all sanctioned events in the same day. The morning portion will have a sanctioned main tournament of 12-16 games. The afternoon portion will have the main event playoffs, and a sanctioned consolation tournament of 7-12 games with consolation playoffs immediately after.

Two-day tournaments

Two-day tournaments will have the sanctioned events spread out over two days. The first day will have a sanctioned main tournament of 18-22 games with main event playoffs in the evening or held on the next day. The second day of the tournament will have the beginning of the main event playoffs (if not started the evening before) and a sanctioned consolation tournament of 7-12 games with consolation playoffs later in the day.

Alternate tournament formats

The annual National Open Cribbage Tournament in Raleigh, North Carolina uses a classic double elimination match play format. It is the only sanctioned ACC tournament to use this format.

Muggins (claiming points that your opponent has missed) is an option that is occasionally included in ACC tournaments.

Major tournaments

JPW/ACC Open

Named after the first President of the American Cribbage Congress, the Joseph P. Wergin/ACC Open (JPW/ACC Open) is held in March of each year in Reno, Nevada and is the largest cribbage tournament in the world, with annual attendance near or over 700 players.

Satellites of the JPW/ACC Open include the annual invitation-only Tournament of Champions and the All-American Tournament.

In 2012, Jeanne Jelke became the first woman to win the JPW/ACC Open. [4]

Grand National

The Grand National is held in the Autumn of each year. The location of the Grand National is determined through a bidding process and rotates between different geographic regions.

Future locations for the Grand National tournament:

YearLocation
2018 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2019 North Conway, New Hampshire
2020 Sacramento, California
2021 Omaha, Nebraska

Satellites of the Grand National tournament include the annual invitation-only Grass Roots Tournament of Champions.

National Open

The National Open is held the last weekend of July each year in Raleigh, North Carolina. The format of the National Open is double-elimination match play. This is the oldest cribbage tournament in the ACC.

Tournament of Champions

The ToC is held on the Friday before the JPW/ACC Open in Reno, NV, every March, and is the only invitation-only tournament. Players can earn an invitation by winning a weekend ACC tournament, or earning one of several lifetime achievements—a Masters rating, a Grass Roots bronze award, or Internet Masters rating. The tournament is an 18-game format, with the top 25% of players continuing to a single-elimination format.

Master Rating Points

Tournament players are awarded Master Rating Points (MRP's) based on tournament results. MRP's accumulate towards the following recognitions:

PointsDescription
2,000Master
4,000Grand Master
6,000Life Master
10,0001 Star Life Master
15,0002 Star Life Master
20,0003 Star Life Master
25,0004 Star Life Master
30,0005 Star Life Master
35,0006 Star Life Master

Local cribbage clubs

There are over 200 local cribbage clubs [5] sanctioned by the ACC. Clubs (called "Grass Roots") are divided into geographic regions and further divided into divisions determined by the frequency of club meetings.

Each Grass Roots session consists of a 9-game round-robin tournament with players who score 12 or more game points (2 points scored for a regular win, 3 points for a skunk) during the tournament earning equivalent Grass Roots Rating Points (GRPs), which accumulate towards levels of recognition. Each Grass Roots club also hosts two 18-game tournaments each year. Club champions are invited to play in the annual Grass Roots Tournament of Champions held at the Grand National Tournament.

Grass Roots Rating Points

Grass Roots players are awarded Grass Roots Rating Points (GRPs) based on the results in local club play. GRPs accumulate towards the following recognitions:

PointsDescription
1,000Bronze
2,500Silver
4,000Gold
6,000Platinum
8,000Diamond

Internet cribbage

The ACC sponsors a limited number of regularly-scheduled sanctioned online tournaments held on select websites.

Formats vary by website, but can follow a match-play knockout format or a Grass Roots-style 9-game round-robin format. The top 25% of finishers in sanctioned internet tournaments earn Internet Rating Points (IRP's) which accumulate towards levels of recognition.

Internet Rating Points

Internet players are awarded Internet Rating Points (IRP's) based on the results in internet tournaments. IRP's accumulate towards the following recognitions:

PointsDescription
2,000eMaster
4,000Grand eMaster
6,000Life eMaster
10,0001 Star Life eMaster
15,0002 Star Life eMaster
20,0003 Star Life eMaster
25,0004 Star Life eMaster
30,0005 Star Life eMaster

Related Research Articles

Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 holes. In match play the winner is the player, or team, with the most points at the end of play.

Cribbage Card game

Cribbage, or crib, is a card game, traditionally for two players, that involves playing and grouping cards in combinations which gain points. It can be adapted for three or four players.

Wizards Play Network Sanctioning body for Wizards of the Coast games

The Wizards Play Network (WPN) is the official sanctioning body for competitive play in Magic: The Gathering (Magic) and various other games produced by Wizards of the Coast and its subsidiaries, such as Avalon Hill. Originally, it was known as the DCI but was rebranded in 2008. The WPN provided game rules, tournament operating procedures, and other materials to private tournament organizers and players. It also operated a judge certification program to provide consistent rules enforcement and promote fair play. The DCI's name was still commonly used, however, to refer to the player registration number until 2020.

International Tennis Federation

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is the governing body of world tennis, wheelchair tennis, and beach tennis. It was founded in 1913 as the International Lawn Tennis Federation by twelve national tennis associations. As of 2016, there are 211 national and six regional associations that make up ITF's membership.

The Players Tour (PT) is a competitive international league for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, culminating in the World Championship. It consists of a series of tournaments held throughout the world, each requiring an invitation to participate. The Players Tour permanently replaced the Pro Tour in the 2020 season. Every PT awards a total of $250,000 in cash prizes, with $50,000 going to the winner. The Players Tour is split into three regions: Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Each region hosts three events, resulting in nine Players Tour events per season.

A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor does not play all the other competitors. Competitors meet one-on-one in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but does not play the same opponent more than once. The winner is the competitor with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds. All competitors play in each round unless there is an odd number of them.

There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.

A third place match, game for third place, bronze medal game or consolation game is a single match that is included in many sporting knockout tournaments to decide which competitor or team will be credited with finishing third and fourth. The teams that compete in the third place playoff game are usually the two losing semi-finalists in a particular knockout tournament.

Play! Pokémon

Play! Pokémon, formerly known as Pokémon Organized Play, is a division of The Pokémon Company International established in 2003 and known for hosting the Pokémon World Championships, a competitive eSports tournament which features the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG), the Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC), and the Pokkén Tournament Championships. It is the official governing body of the competitive tournament circuit for Pokémon, as well as the organizer of a variety of programs for casual players of the game.

The 2006 IBAF Intercontinental Cup was held in Taichung, Taiwan from November 9 through the 19th. Eight countries contested the tournament, which was played at Taichung Baseball Field and the newly built Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium. The participating countries were Cuba, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines in addition to the hosts from Chinese Taipei (Taiwan). The tournament was sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation.

Cribbage (pool)

Cribbage, sometimes called cribbage pool, fifteen points and pair pool, is a two-player pool game that, like its namesake card game, has a scoring system which awards points for pairing groups of balls that total 15. Played on a standard pool table, participants who pocket a ball of a particular number are required to immediately pocket the companion ball that tallies to 15 when added to the prior ball's number. Each pair so pocketed counts as a cribbage; there are seven such pairs, and the 15 ball counts as an eighth by itself after all of the others have been pocketed. The first player to score five cribbages wins the game.

The rules here are based on those of the American Cribbage Congress and apply to two-, three- or four-player games, with details of variations being listed below.

Chess tournament Series of competitive chess games

A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players.

The World Rapid Chess Championship is a chess tournament held to determine the world champion in chess played under rapid time controls. Prior to 2012, FIDE gave such recognition to a limited number of tournaments, with non-FIDE recognized tournaments annually naming a world rapid champion of their own. Since 2012, FIDE has held an annual joint rapid and blitz chess tournament and billed it as the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships. FIDE also holds the Women's World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship. The current rapid world champion is the Uzbek grandmaster Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Alexandra Kosteniuk from Russia is the current women's rapid world champion.

The UK National Scrabble Championship (NSC) is a British national Scrabble tournament that has been held annually since its inception in 1971. It was formerly organised by Mattel, the copyright owners of Scrabble in the UK, and has been organised by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP) since 2014. It is one of five major tournaments in the UK, the other four being the UK Open, the British Isles Elimination Scrabble Tournament (BEST), the British Matchplay Scrabble Championship (BMSC) and the UK Masters. The current UK champion is Phil Robertshaw.

The Richmond International Midget Hockey Tournament is one of the largest tournaments held in North America. This tournament is an ice hockey tournament held annually for midget aged players in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

<i>League of Legends</i> European Championship

The League of Legends European Championship (LEC) is the professional League of Legends esports league run by Riot Games in Europe, in which ten teams compete. Each annual season of play is divided into two splits, spring and summer, both consisting of nine weeks of round-robin tournament play, which then conclude with play-off tournaments between the top six teams. At the end of the season, the top performing teams qualify for the annual League of Legends World Championship. The LEC represents the highest level of League of Legends play in Europe.

<i>Gwent: The Witcher Card Game</i> 2018 video game

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is a free-to-play digital collectible card game developed and published by CD Projekt for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2018, for iOS in 2019, for Android in 2020, and for macOS in 2021. The game is derived from the card game of the same name featured in Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher novels and playable in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video game.

43rd Chess Olympiad Chess tournament

The 43rd Chess Olympiad, organised by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) and comprising open and women's tournaments, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, was held in Batumi, Georgia, from 23 September to 6 October 2018. This was the first Chess Olympiad to take place in Georgia with the Georgian Chess Federation also hosting the Chess World Cup 2017 in Tbilisi.

Magic: The Gathering Organized Play is the worldwide program for all levels of tournaments for the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Created in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, the Organized Play program has grown to host some of the largest trading card game tournaments ever, with hundreds of thousands of events each year. The vast majority of events are casual gaming events hosted at local stores, however, due to a common ranking system and set of rules and policies, these events ultimately feed players into the highest levels of play.

References

  1. "Volume 38 No. 5 Cribbage World Newsletter" (PDF). American Cribbage Congress. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
  2. "Volume 38 No. 10 Cribbage World Newsletter" (PDF). American Cribbage Congress. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
  3. "Volume 33 No. 5 Cribbage World Newsletter: BOD Election Results" (PDF). American Cribbage Congress. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-08-16. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-06-04. Retrieved 2012-05-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. http://www.accgrassroots.org/