[1] It is a descendant of the Elizabethan game of Primero[2] and one of the several ancestors to poker, the modern version just varying in betting style and hand rankings.

"[3] The rules of Brag first appear in 1721 in The Compleat Gamester where it is referred to as "The Ingenious and Pleasant Game of Bragg",[4] but in fact, it originates in an almost identical game called Post and Pair which is recorded as far back as 1528 (as Post) and which, in turn, was descended from Primero.

[3] However, Brag introduced a key innovation over Post and Pair: the concept of wild cards known as 'braggers'.

[4] In parallel with this early three-stake game, in 1751 Hoyle describes a version of Brag with a shortened pack that only had a single phase – the vying or 'bragging' round – with special powers for certain Jacks and Nines, thus anticipating the modern single-stake game.

[5] In 1825, an early American account of Brag describes a much more elaborate single-stake game with a complex vying procedure.

[6] Not until 1860 are rules for both variants published in one compendium, whereby "Three Stake Brag" is virtually unchanged from the earliest rules and the version of "Single Brag" described is less complicated than its American cousin.

[7] In a 1981 survey by Waddingtons, Brag was the fourth most popular card game in Britain.

[9][10] The earliest published rules for any form of Brag appear in Richard Seymour's 1721 revision of Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester.

(Unlike usual poker betting, a player's previous money contributed to the pot is ignored.)

The full probabilities are as follows: In Brag, three-of-a-kind is known as a prial, a word derived from "pair royal".