Stop the bus

Stop the bus is a card game common in England, where it is also known by the alternate name Bastard, built around the same hand-ranking system used in the older gambling game Brag. Hand strength runs from a prial, three cards of the same rank, down through a running flush, an ordinary run, a flush, a pair and finally a plain high card, with players trying to build or hold the strongest hand relative to their opponents. Play revolves around tokens that represent lives, with players exchanging cards from a central pool to improve their hand across the game, and any player may call for the round to end by stopping play once they judge their hand strong enough, forcing every remaining player to reveal and compare. The game belongs to the wider Commerce family of card games, sharing its card-swapping structure with related regional pub and family card games across Britain.