Bridge - the card game

Have restarted Bridge. I used to play, direct and teach at the local club.
Had a rest from it as I was losing my focus in it and thought it would be good when I retire.

Directing is interesting. A Bridge Director is like a referee at a game. We adjudicate when anything that goes wrong.
Have to sit 2 exams to be a qualified Director. They are the hardest exams I have ever sat. Almost no-one passes them the first time.
I have not directed for many years so will sit the exams again, even though I do not have to.
Once I am in the hot seat it's important to know the laws well, know how they apply and have the confidance that what I say is correct.

My bridge is going well.
I held my concentration today for the full 3 hours, made one bidding mistake in the whole session.
Am happy about it all.

Bridge is a wonderfully complex involving game.
There are 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000 different possible hand combinations that can be dealt.

Ahah - found a though on how big a number that is
"How large an area would you need to spread all possible bridge deals if each deal would occupy only one square millimeter?". The answer is: an area more than a hundred million times the surface area of Earth.'
If there were 1,000,000 $1 notes stacked on top of one another it would be about the height of a 33 storey building.



For the bidding, there are 128,745,650,347,030,683,120,231,926,111,609,371,363,122,697,557 different bidding sequences possible.