Talk:Brag (card game)

Players must always play the next best available set they have made
Found in the description of Nine Card Brag, I think it a little confusing. Does this mean that players start by playing their worst hand, and then playing the next best hand. Or do they start with their best hand? It could be clearer, I think.Steve De (talk) 13:34, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Define Prial?
Prial is used twice in the article without definition. The table of hand rankings lists "three of a kind" rather than "prial", which suggests that editors are not sure that readers will understand what a prial is. Therefore, either use "three of a kind" throughout, or define prial at its first use.Steve De (talk) 13:34, 4 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Prial is now linked in both places. The term 'prial' is a short form of 'pair royal' which is the name in this game for a triplet or, in the long-winded vernacular, 'three of a kind'. All are explained at the link article. Bermicourt (talk) 12:33, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Pot Covering
There is nothing in the article about pot covering which occurs when a player does not have the funds to continue betting. When this happens, he/she places what they have into the pot and place their cards face down on top of the pot. All subsequent bets from other players are placed on top of these cards, or more often, into another pile. When the hand is over, the winning cards are compared against the covering cards, if the covered cards beat the winning hand, the player takes only the covered pot, the winning hand taking the rest. If the winning hand beats the covered hand, the winning hand takes everything.

If a winning hand is unseen, a referee is required to compare the hands to prevent other players from seeing the unseen hand.

A player cannot cover a pot with a blind hand.

Another variation on Pot Covering is surrendering. If this variation is allowed, a player may place twice the current bet into the pot and surrender his/her hand, effectively covering the pot, even though he/she may have enough funds to continue normal betting.

86.182.202.37 (talk) 16:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed merger
STRONGLY AGAINST MERGER : This is how he game is popular among INDIA masses, hardly anybody knows tha phrase "Three Cards" among the masses. Infact, that is how even I searched on net by the words "Teen Patti Game". Wikipedia is for masses, not for select elite chosing their own language and/pr phrase. You can also analyse the no. of hits FROM INDIA that you get on "three cards" Vs. "Teen Patti". Thus, it should NOT be merged at all. Thanks 13:27, 15 February 2015 (UTC)Akagarwaal (talk)

Since no one actually started the discussion after tagging the articles, I figured I would.

Incredibly strong support - It's the same game. Period. The variations in betting practices are not sufficiently notable to warrant a separate article at all. The Three card poker article is a promotional puff piece of the worst variety, designed explicitly to make money for the holders of a trademark (which is so generic it's probably invalid to start). All of its sources are primary and promotional. It really should be deleted outright as an advertisement and must be cleaned up. Merging to here and jettisoning all the promotional crap is the best way to do that. oknazevad (talk) 19:09, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 22 February 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved per consensus. — usernamekiran (talk)  12:00, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Three card brag → Three-card brag – Per MOS:HYPHEN, as three-card is a compound modifier. 142.161.81.20 (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Andrewa (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Three Card Brag is almost exclusively given in reliable sources as a proper noun proper name. [verify ] Seeing this, I suggest, alternatively, that Three card brag be moved instead to Three Card Brag.--John Cline (talk) 21:34, 22 February 2018 (UTC) Struck through error and refactored its correction.--John Cline (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * How does its being a proper noun or not concern its hyphenation? 142.161.81.20 (talk) 21:39, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In my initial regards, I misstated the title as a proper noun. I should have said proper name, and have refactored the comment to effect its correction. I am drafting an answer for how a proper name influences its hyphenation, and will publish that answer when it's complete; soon I hope. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Answering this question has touched on complex matters and advanced grammar applications. It comes of my best attempt and earnest intent to be thorough and yet remain clear. I hope this reflects in the read. Speaking first of hyphenation, it's important to understand that in grammar the hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join the separate parts of a grammatical compound. And, that it both is, and for many years has been , waning in usage and vogue. The consensus among language professionals and purveyors of writing style is that hyphens are a regrettable necessity, to be done without whenever they reasonably may . More and more, style guides including our own MoS are stipulating reasons for not hyphenating compounds.  With that, let's next consider the noun itself.  Focusing on the two main classes of nouns, of which: every noun, without exception , must either be one or the other,  will lead to this question's answer. The classes are common nouns and proper nouns, alternatively called improper nouns and proper names respectively. Forgoing the endless potential of interesting things that can be shown among the member-nouns and -noun phrases in these classes (how they are classed, how they can change by modifications, and other nuances in use) I'll instead go directly to the conclusions, I'll next state (saving time without compromising validity).  Where all nouns serve to reference a person, place, or thing, the common form references these in general terms that all elements of the subclass share while the proper form references the noun unto an element that is absolutely unique . For example, while the common noun, planet, references all celestial bodies that orbit a sun, the proper noun, Earth, references a specific planet (unique among all others). In the strictest grammatical sense, a proper noun is limited to single words where proper names allow word groupings. Whereas, in this sense, while all proper nouns are proper names, all proper names are not strictly proper nouns, and since titles of works are proper names, a proper name need not contain a noun to itself become a noun; for example: The Happening, a 2008 film by M. Night Shyamalan. Because the hyphen's use is being relegated to instances of necessity (to reduce confusion in ambiguous applications) the uniqueness of a proper name serves the purpose without requiring a hyphen. For example, the proper name of the hyphenated phrase: brothers-in-arms becomes Brothers in Arms. This is consistent with our own Manual of Style, as well, where it says: "... never insert a hyphen into a proper name ..."  Therefor, where the phrase "three card games" would mean a quantity of three games played with cards, a hyphen would be needed to modify games by the compound modifier, three-card, if the intent was to reference card games played with hands of three cards. No such ambiguity can arise in referencing "Three Card Brag", the proper name of the absolutely unique card game referenced thereby. The only exception would be when the common name in its proper form uses hyphenation, in which case, we would too. In this instance, the common name, in its proper form, is ubiquitously given without hyphenation and, therefor, so should ours.--John Cline (talk) 10:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding the link to search results you edited in, our stylistic decisions are based first and foremost on the MOS. If the implication is that Yahoo! Search results somehow take precedence, that would seem to be a clear instance of the specialized-style fallacy. 142.161.81.20 (talk) 23:35, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The link is given only to illustrate that searching this title, even when favoring results that use the hyphen, the vast majority of returns are shown without hyphenation. Demonstrate where this is not reflective of the common name used in a preponderance of independent, reliable sources.--John Cline (talk) 10:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. Grammatically, it is a compound modifier. — the Man in Question (in question)  21:55, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Relisting comment: I note this reverses  07:56, 16 November 2003‎ Angela (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (29 bytes) (+29)‎ . . (moved to "Three_card_brag") so it seems only fair to ping who is currently active. Andrewa (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've no objection. Angela (talk) 01:45, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Support per nominator; "three-card" is a compound adjective. ╠╣uw [ talk ]  10:38, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. A review of Google Scholar and Google Books suggests that the hyphenated version is used just as often as the non-hyphenated version in reliable sources in English, so in this case I would defer to the MOS. I would not support Three-Card Brag, as the standard for poker games seems to be to leave it uncapitalized, as in Texas hold'em.--Aervanath (talk) 11:02, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Hand Ranking
According to the source at the foot of the article, a prial is the highest hand outranking a straight flush. Also, the source states that a prial of threes is the highest hand and a straight flush of A-2-3 outranks A-K-Q. This is also my experience of playing three card brag.

 Aint no saint (talk) 11:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Expansion and referencing
I'm in the process of expanding the article and have started with the history section. I've temporarily added a few 'citation needed' tags, but I can see that the existing text was probably taken largely from Parlett's Dictionary of Card Games, so I'll remove them again once they're properly referenced. I've renamed the article simply 'Brag' because that it how it is referred to in most sources, and there are at least two variants that use three cards anyway, including the most common one that is usually referred to as "Brag". Bermicourt (talk) 09:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

How can you draw 31 in classic brag?
In the third stage of classic brag, the goal is to get to 31, or as close as possible, and players can exchange cards to try and get to 31 - but bust if they go over? Players have three cards and aces count as ten - how are they meant to go over 31? 2001:569:BDA9:9000:5C79:AB95:3B5E:8593 (talk) 04:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for flagging that up. The source only talks about players "drawing" cards not exchanging them, so I've changed the text. That makes it entirely possible to exceed 31. David Parlett's History of Card Games seems to agree. Bermicourt (talk) 19:49, 20 July 2023 (UTC)