Playing cribbage is a lot of harmless fun all over Maine, especially in American Legion posts, as the state police and Legislature now know if they didn’t before.

The current trouble began just before Veterans Day, when a Maine State Police inspector shut down the weekly cribbage game at the Legion post in Gardiner. He was enforcing an old law that requires a license fee of $700 a year if players pay more than $1 to enter. Times had changed, and players now usually pay $5, with the pot going to the winner.

It happens that Sen. Earle E. McCormick, R-West Gardiner, and Rep. Stephen Hanley, D-Gardiner, are members of the post, and they promptly proposed a bill to rectify the matter. But they found that Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, and Rep. Donna Finley, R-Skowhegan, had already heard from worried constituents and had proposed a bill that would authorize low-stakes cribbage games at charitable and fraternal organizations.

The bill is among many that were rejected by the Legislative Council as not being “of an emergency nature.” The rejection is under appeal for 134 of them, including the cribbage bill. Sen. Mills told the council: “If this does not sound like an emergency to some of you, then you haven’t been getting calls from our many constituents who have been suddenly deprived of their cribbage games by an abrupt change in policy of the Maine State Police.”

Sen. Mills says the enforcement decision apparently was made at a low level and that state police should have referred the matter to the Legislature to bring the law up to date. He called the $1 limit outmoded. He hopes the matter can be settled when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

This minor squabble has exploded into a regional and even international issue, with out-of-state media ridiculing it and even a complaint that came in from Japan.

In a broader sense, the question arises whether this centuries-old British board game is gambling at all. Rep. Hanley says it’s more skill than chance. But Sen. Mills says that, while skill is involved, redrafting the official definition of gambling to exempt cribbage might even rule out poker as a game of chance.

Cribbage is a great board game, with its six cards dealt to each player, the critical decisions as to which two cards to throw into the “crib,” the “pegging” of points along the 121 holes along the board, and the scoring of the hand and the crib.

Winners usually call it a game of skill, while losers tend to blame their loss on bad luck. But, in a way, it’s like life itself: It isn’t just the cards you’re dealt; it’s also how you play them.