Bastard Brag

Players and equipment

Three to ten players, each playing for themselves, and a standard 52-card deck. Bastard Brag is Three Card Brag's draw-and-discard cousin: everybody still ends up holding the best three-card hand they can, but instead of betting on a hand you were dealt, you spend your turns trading cards with a spare hand in the middle until somebody stops the trading dead. Four to six players make the best game. Start every player with three lives, kept as tokens, a line of chips, or just a tally everyone remembers.

The deal

The dealer deals three cards, one at a time, clockwise, to every player and to a spare hand of three laid in the middle of the table. The spare hand's first two cards go face down and its third goes face up. The turn to deal passes left after every hand.

Play

The player to the dealer's left goes first, and the turn moves clockwise. On your turn you do one of three things:

Exchange one card. Put one card from your hand face down on the table and take one of the three spare cards in its place. Taking the face-up spare turns your discard face up too, so the table sees it; taking a face-down spare keeps both cards hidden, and you keep your discard apart from the spare cards until you have drawn, so you cannot take the same card back.

Exchange three cards. Put your whole hand down, turning one of its three cards face up, and take all three spare cards as your new hand.

Knock. Keep your hand exactly as it is and take no further turns this hand. You may only knock from the second round on, once everyone at the table has exchanged at least once.

Once somebody knocks, every other player gets exactly one more turn — exchange one card or three, never knock in reply — and the moment the turn comes back round to the player who knocked, the trading stops and hands are shown.

Scoring

There is no score to add up. Every hand ends with a showdown of three-card Brag hands, best to worst exactly as in Three Card Brag:

Prial

3♠ 3♥ 3♦

Three of a kind, and threes beat aces

Running flush

A♠ 2♠ 3♠

Three in sequence, one suit; ace high or low, and A-2-3 is the best

Run

A♦ 2♣ 3♥

Three in sequence, mixed suits; ace high or low, and A-2-3 is the best

Flush

K♥ 9♥ 4♥

Three of one suit, not in sequence

Pair

Q♠ Q♦ 8♣

Two of a rank and an odd card

High card

A♠ J♦ 9♣

None of the above, ranked card by card

Whoever holds the worst hand at the showdown loses a life. Two hands of the same type compare as Three Card Brag does: a higher pair beats a lower one whatever the odd card, so 5-5-3 beats 4-4-K, and only then does the odd card count; flushes and high cards compare card by card from the top. Only two hands of exactly the same ranks tie, and that tie is broken by the suit of each hand's highest card, ranked spades, hearts, diamonds, then clubs. That rule only breaks ties and is used nowhere else in the game. Lose three lives and you are out for good; the last player with a life left wins.

SquareScores keeps no cards and no lives — you keep those at the table, the same tokens or tally the Players and equipment section describes — and the whole game, from the first hand to the last survivor, is one match on a knockout table. Most hands need no tap at all. Only when a hand costs a player their third life do you tap their name, and they take the place that is the number of players still standing: with six still in, the first one knocked out takes sixth. The tap that leaves one player standing crowns them in the same motion, and the next game opens on its own. The host chooses at launch between a winner-takes-all table, where only the survivor is named and everyone else simply reads "out," and a ranked table, where the last three to fall carry three, two and one points.

A worked game

Four players — Alice, Ben, Cara and Dev — all start with three lives.

Hand one

Ben down to two lives

Ben's pair loses to Alice's run, Cara's flush and Dev's prial

Hand two

Alice down to two lives

Alice's high card loses to the table

Hand three

Ben down to one life

Ben's high card loses again

Hand four

Ben out, fourth

Ben's flush is the worst at the table again

Hand five

Alice down to one life

Alice's pair loses to Dev's run

Hand six

Alice out, third

Alice's high card loses to Cara and Dev

Hand seven

Cara down to two lives

Cara's pair loses to Dev's flush

Hand eight

Cara down to one life

Cara's high card loses to Dev's pair

Hand nine

Cara out, second; Dev wins

Cara's high card loses to Dev again

Ben's two bad hands in a row cost him the game early; Alice hung on through two lost lives before a weak high card finished her. Dev never once held the worst hand, so all three of his lives went untouched to the end. Three taps filed the table: the tap on Ben wrote fourth, the tap on Alice third, and the tap on Cara wrote second for her and first for Dev together, and the next game opened the moment the table was filed.

Ending

Hands run one after another, the deal passing left each time, until only one player has a life left. That player wins; everyone else is already filed by the tap that put them out.

Exchange for a pair before you chase a prial

A pair beats more hands than it loses to, and it is usually one good exchange away — swap your worst unmatched card for whatever the spare hand offers and you are already better than high card. A prial is rare and worth abandoning a pair to chase only when your lives can afford the gamble; most tables are lost by a weak high card, not by missing a prial.

Watch what people leave behind

Every face-up spare card and every discard you can see tells you what somebody turned down. A player who exchanges three cards and leaves a king face up almost certainly holds nothing worth a king, which tells you plenty about the cards still hidden in that hand. Count what has gone past you before you decide your own exchange is good enough.

Knock when you are ahead, not when you are tired

Knocking locks in your hand and gives everybody else exactly one more turn to beat it, so only knock once your hand already beats most of what you have seen discarded. Knocking early on a middling pair just hands the table one more free trade each before the showdown; knock late on a strong hand and you may have let somebody improve past you for nothing.

Spend your early lives on information

A life lost in the first couple of hands tells you nothing you could not have guessed from watching the table. Play those hands to learn who knocks early and who chases a prial, and save your caution for later, once somebody is down to their last life and a loss actually ends their game.

Play safest once you are down to one life

With one life left, a middling hand you would normally try to improve is a hand you should fight to keep rather than risk on an exchange that could leave you worse off. Take the smallest exchange that moves you off the bottom of the table, and knock the moment you are no longer the worst hand in sight.

The money version

Some tables skip lives altogether and play Bastard Brag for a pot instead: everybody antes, there are exactly two rounds of exchanging rather than knocking at will, and after the second round the players bet on whose hand is best, right down to paying double to see the last player left in, exactly as in ordinary Three Card Brag. It is a different game on the sheet — chips and a pot rather than lives and a knockout — so a table that wants it is better served by Three Card Brag's own page.

Picking before you discard

Some tables let a player who is about to take a face-down spare card pick it up and look at it first, before deciding which of their own cards to discard, but the card they picked up is theirs and may not be the one they discard. It removes a little of the guesswork from a face-down exchange and speeds the game up.

Every spare card face up

Instead of one spare card face up and two hidden, some tables turn all three face up from the start, or at least two of them. Every exchange is now visible to everybody, which makes the game easier for beginners and takes away a layer of bluffing that the hidden spares usually carry.

No knocking in the first two rounds

Some tables insist that everybody has exchanged at least twice, not once, before anybody may knock. Agree it before the first deal, since it changes how fast a table holding strong early hands can end the trading.

Knocking does not force a last exchange

A few tables let the players after a knock choose to keep their own hand instead of trading one last time, rather than forcing an exchange on everybody. It slows the game down less than it sounds, since most players already holding a decent hand would rather lock it in than risk a last trade.

How many lives do you start with in Bastard Brag?

Three is standard. Lose all three and you are out of the game; the last player with a life left wins. Some tables start with more, which only makes a long game longer.

Can you exchange your whole hand in Bastard Brag?

Yes. Instead of swapping one card you may put your whole three-card hand down, turn one of its cards face up, and take all three spare cards as a new hand. It is a bigger gamble than a one-card exchange, since you give up everything you held for cards you have barely seen.

What beats what in Bastard Brag?

The same order as Three Card Brag: a prial of three of a kind beats a running flush, which beats a plain run, which beats a flush, which beats a pair, which beats high card. Threes are the best prial rather than aces, and a run of ace, two, three beats every other run.

Is Bastard Brag the same as Stop the Bus?

Sometimes. The game for lives on this page is also known as Stop the Bus, but other tables use that name for a different draw-and-discard game, so check which rules your table means before the first deal.

How do you break a tie for the worst hand in Bastard Brag?

By the suit of each tied hand's highest card: spades beats hearts, hearts beats diamonds, diamonds beats clubs. It only ever settles who has lost a life, never who has won the game outright.

Can you look at a face-down spare card before deciding what to discard?

Not in the standard game. You put your discard down first, then take either face-down spare without seeing it beforehand. Some tables let you look first and then choose what to throw away; agree which way you are playing before the first deal.