Brelan

Brelan is a French vying card game notable for its rapidly escalating bets, and it was especially popular in France from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Vying games as a family are built around players wagering on the relative strength of their hands rather than trying to reach an exact numeric target, and Brelan follows that pattern with a fast tempo of raises that could turn a small opening stake into a large pot within a few rounds. Historians of card games trace a reference to the name as early as an edict issued at Lille, France, in 1458, though most specialists agree the word only came to refer to the specific card game described here starting in the seventeenth century, with the earlier medieval references likely describing a related but distinct pastime. The game is played by three to five players and shares its root system of hand rankings with the Italian Renaissance game Primero. Brelan is historically significant beyond its own play because it fed directly into the development of later vying games, evolving into the English game of Brag and subsequently into Bouillotte, a lineage that historians of card games connect to the eventual rise of modern poker.