BRIDGE EPIDEMIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20174, 7 February 1929, Page 5

BRIDGE EPIDEMIC.

I do not know the total number of bridge players in this country, nor, indeed, how that figure, can be accurately ascertained, but, judging from some card statistics recently published in New \ork, I conclude that bridge is still more widely played in the United States than in the British Isles, states a London writer. During the year 1927 approximately forty-five million packs of cards were sold in the United States, the card tax yielding the State .a revenue of nearly one million sterling. In Great Britain I understand the annual sale of cards is less than five millions, while the revenuo to the Government for 1926 was approximately £70,000. If these figures be correct, it would seem that in America one person in three buys a pack of cards as against one in nine in this country. The American statistics to which T have referred fix the number of bridge plavers at six millions. Not less than 300.000 persons earn their living by teaching bridge, while in 1927 the sale of books on bridge exceeded a figure of 480,000 copies!