Here's some fun homework: Before the Discard, how many of THESE hands contain ZERO POINTS? Okay, today's Discard Choice seems rather simple to me: We have nada, zilch, nothing, zip, diddly squat. Isn't that comforting? That probably explains why, in spite of playing this game since gasoline was selling for only twenty-nine cents per gallon, you've NEVER been dealt even the makings of the 'Perfect' or 'Twenty-Nine-Point' Cribbage Hand! Of course, most of the time suits don't matter, and so if we do ignore them, there are 'only' a total of 18,395 different hands that can result from six cards being dealt out of a fifty-two-card deck. With the WORST HAND EVER! We're dealt Six Cards in Cribbage, and how often do you think that ALL of them add up to ZERO POINTS, even before the Discard? It seems like WAY too often, doesn't it? If you ask most Cribbage Players, they will insist, 'Oh, I'm pretty sure I get this hand at east once, maybe twice, every game!' As every Cribbage player knows (or should know): 52 choose 6 = 20,358,520 and so if we take suits into consideration, the odds of getting THIS particular Hand, or ANY particular Hand for that matter, is about one in twenty million.
