Bridge in Numbers

Statistics can tell us a lot about the world around us, including the way we play our card games. Have you ever wondered just how many possible bridge hands there are? Let’s take a closer look at some cool numbers in bridge.

Number of Bridge Hands Possible

According to Bridge Guys, there are a total of 635, 013, 559, 600 possible bridge hands (from a 52-card deck); the number increases with the number of decks used, and the number can be exponentially higher than this. Huh. I always heard it was the same number as there were grains of sand on a beach.

Richard Pavlicek’s Bridge Toys Run Numbers

Richard Pavlicek’s collection of bridge calculators is a lot of fun, and pretty helpful – whether you need to replay a past game or you are trying to figure something out during practice. Combinations, probabilities, and patterns – the collection, and a whole lot of other cool bridge stuff, can be found at RPBridge.

The Average Age of Bridge Players

According to a 2015 article from the ACBL, the average age of United States bridge players was 71 – although this statistic has almost certainly changed, since interest in bridge players among the younger crowd is still on the increase. (And if you’re younger than 71 well, you’re helping bridge reach more people just by playing– so good on you!)

Number of Bridge Players Globally

According to a 2005 article in the New York Times, it was estimated that there were approximately 25 million adult bridge players out there, with 3 million being regular, once-per-week players who played at least once weekly. It’s more than ten years after this statistic, and we can only imagine that this number is, by now, considerably higher.

The ACBL website says that they “serve over 165, 000 members” and saw 3.5 million bridge tables and 1 million online tables per year – and they include more than 3, 000 bridge clubs.

In 2015, the online gaming market had a volume of 37.91 billion U.S. dollars, this figure is forecasted to increase to 59.79 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 (Source). If you’re interested in trying out some online card games, you can play at a trusted UK casino here.

The Largest Bridge Drive

According to Guinness World Records, the “largest bridge drive at a single location” involved 3086 people playing in the Netherlands on the 21st of May, 2000. (Future alien archaeologists might just think that the survivors of Y2K got together for a huge bridge game in a few million years or so…).

9,776,727

That’s how many hits Great Bridge Links received over the past 12 months. That’s a lot of people looking for Bridge Links!