How many possible hands are there in the game of bridge?

Bridge is played with one standard deck of 52 cards. The jokers are discarded.

The cards are dealt out one at a time until the entire deck is used. Each player has 13 cards in their hand.

A second deck is also on the table so that the dealer's partner can shuffle the used deck while the dealer is dealing out the cards that were previously shuffled. In this way there is no time lost waiting for cards to be shuffled.