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Nowhere are congruences more vivid, striking or spectacular than in self-working magic tricks. Though "swept under the rug," they are there, guaranteeing the performer success. The audience can only marvel at the effect... and suspect that the magic of numbers is at work.
Bridge (and its ancestor, whist) is, along with chess, one of the two most celebrated games in the West, as the quotation below from Edgar Allan Poe attests — no doubt too flattering. Probability is often invoked in deciding which strategy to adopt.
Mathematicians have been studying blackjack since the postwar years. They discovered ways to improve players’ performance by applying probabilities both statically (basic strategy) and dynamically (card counting). But casinos changed the rules to protect themselves.
Bridge begins with an auction, in which players commit to taking a minimum number of tricks during play. Statistical methods make it possible to rationalize this decision-making process.
