Until the French Revolution, aces were low having a numerical value of "1". They became high to symbolise the power of the common people over the monarchy.

There are 635,103,559,600 different hands that a player can receive. To put this in context, if you play 36 boards every day and the same hand didn't come up more than once, it would take a shade over 48,300,521 years before you'd have seen them all.

The odds against being dealt A K Q, A K Q, A K Q, A K Q and any J are 158,753,389,899 to 1. By comparison this makes winning the lottery look very easy.

The odds against being dealt a complete suit are 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,999 to 1. So based on 36 boards a day, you shouldn't have to wait much more than 169,985,262,164,498,224,119,011 years. This is a good deal longer than from the big-bang to today.

Perhaps the most relevant - the odds for at least one hand having at least one singleton are only slightly over 2 to 1.

I'm sure we've all sat in the middle of contract wondering whether to play for the 'drop' or a finesse. Without any other information to go on, like the opposition bidding or the point each has already played and given that you know about your cards and those in dummy, the disposition of the remainder in that suit can be calculated. The table below shows these probabilities. I have sorted them to show the most likely at the top. I doubt you'll want to remember the actual probability but it useful to know which is the highest.

Playing cards may have been made double-ended for the ease of bridge players.

The corners were rounded off during the 1800's in America to defeat cheating by folding the corner.

Have you ever wondered why the court cards look they way they do? Take a look at the bottom panel to see the history.

With grateful thanks to Newent Bridge Club.