It took Coralie Adams 50 years to achieve perfection.
And she did it with an amazing “hand”, one so elusive that the odds are one in 649,740 of ever getting it.
She did this on April 8 with scoring a perfect ‘29’ in cribbage. Her accomplishment is considered the Holy Grail of the time-honoured card game. It is such a celebrated feat there are entire web sites devoted to it, and newspapers will write stories with far greater enthusiasm than for scoring a hole in one in golf.
Coralie, 68, got her hand while playing with her husband Ken, 72 and 49-year-old son Keith, who was visiting from Medicine Hat.
Keith was dealing the hand, the fourth one of the game, and Coralie wound up with a jack of diamonds, a five of hearts, a five of spades and the five of clubs. The cut turned up a five of diamonds.
Everyone was stunned.
“When I laid the cards down I said, ‘I’m not sure how to count them.’ I wasn’t sure what to do with them,” said Coralie. “Ken said to me, ‘I think you’ve got a 29.”
Ken, a retired Innisfail business owner, said he was initially more excited than his wife.
“I knew it was pretty rare. Years ago this sort of thing made the newspapers,” said Ken, who has been playing cribbage recreationally with his wife for the past half century. He has never scored a 29.
Equally amazed was Keith, who had never before witnessed or knew anyone personally who scored a perfect cribbage hand.
“We were all pretty shocked. It took us a few minutes to realize what it was,” said Keith.
In the rare cases when a 29 hand is dealt it is usually with just two players in the game. The odds of this happening are one in 216,580. But in Coralie’s game there were three players, making the odds an astounding one in 649,740.
What makes getting a perfect hand especially difficult is the final point – matching the suit of the jack with the cut card, or the “nob”, as it is termed.
Meanwhile, Coralie’s perfect hand made up for a disappointing day 24 hours earlier– one in which she was “skunked” in the game. But with her 29 hand she was able to get sweet revenge. When the game finished both her husband and son were skunked.
Best of all there is a wonderful lingering feeling of accomplishment that she will hold on for a very long time.
“I don’t usually win anything,’ said Coralie. “If I buy a lottery ticket I think of it as just a donation.”
