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Stop the Bus is a simple card game, common in England where it is also known as Bastard.

The game uses the hand rankings from Brag. Three of a kind, (a prial), is the best hand followed by a running flush, then a run, then a flush, then a pair followed by a high card. If a hand is otherwise similar then the card is ranked by high card or high pair, then by middle card or kicker, then low card. No suits are higher valued than any other.

The game is played with a standard 52 card deck. Each player starts with some number of tokens, generally 3, and the last person to lose his token wins. Each round everybody is dealt 3 cards face down, with 3 dealt into the middle face up. Starting with the player on the dealer's left and working clockwise each player must take either 1 or 3 of the centre cards and replace it with an equal number from his own hand. After playing, he may elect to "Stop the Bus", in which case everybody else gets one turn only. After somebody has "Stopped the Bus" and everybody else has had a turn, the hands are revealed. The player or players with the weakest hand must relinquish one token, and play continues with the new dealer being the player immediately clockwise of the old dealer. Once a player has lost all of his tokens he is out. The winner is the last player to retain a token.

The above description is totally alien to me. We played it similar to '31' except we had a kitty and a pot. Each player put a penny in the kitty and a penny in the pot before each hand. Whoever won the hand won the kitty but to win the pot you had to 'stop the bus' with 31 in your hand. You then won both kitty and pot! This encouraged a lot of tactical play!

References

1. Parlett, David (1979). The Penguin Encyclopedia of Card Games. Penguin. p. 394. ISBN 0-14-028032-4.

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