Playing the cards
Counting the hand
Every expert does it and almost no club player does. It is not a talent and it is not arithmetic beyond adding to thirteen — it is a habit, and the reason most people never build it is that they try to count all four suits at once and give up.
What counting actually buys you
You hold eight cards in a suit missing the queen. Finesse, or play for the drop? Without a count it is a guess worth roughly half a trick.
With one it is not a guess. If East is known to hold five hearts, three spades and two clubs, they have three diamonds, and the queen is far more likely to be in the longer hand.
Almost every "lucky" play by a good player is this. They were not guessing better; they had already worked out where the card was.
Count one suit, not four
This is the whole technique, and the reason people fail at it is that nobody says it.
Pick the suit that will decide the contract — usually trumps, or the suit you must develop. Count that one. When it is finished, the opponents' remaining cards are thirteen minus what you know, and the other suits often fall out for free.
- Count how many of your chosen suit are missing.
- Watch who follows and who does not. The first discard is the loudest thing that happens all hand.
- When one opponent shows out, you know both hands' length in that suit exactly.
Where the information comes from
The auction
The loudest source, and free. An opponent who preempted has seven of that suit and six elsewhere. A 1NT opener is balanced, so no suit is shorter than a doubleton.
Silence talks too. A player who never bid over a one-level opening is unlikely to hold a six-card suit and 12 points.
The opening lead
A fourth-highest lead places the suit almost exactly — apply the rule of 11. A lead from a sequence says where the honours are. A singleton lead says a great deal about the whole hand.
Every card after that
Defenders signal count to each other and you get to read it. High-low is an even number — see defensive signals, and they cannot switch it off without confusing partner.
A discard is the strongest evidence of all: it means that player has run out, and it fixes their length in the suit they discarded from too.
A hand where it decides everything
12 points, four spades.
18 points. Playing 4♠, missing the spade ten and four others.
West opened 2♥, a weak two. That single bid is the whole hand: West has six hearts, so East has two.
Play three rounds of clubs and West discards a heart on the third. West is now known to hold six hearts, two clubs, and when the diamonds run, the count is complete. Whatever is left in West's hand is spades, and you finesse the way the count says rather than the way the odds do.
Defenders count too, and have it easier
A defender sees dummy from trick two and can count declarer's hand the same way. In some respects it is easier: declarer told you about their shape during the auction, and dummy is face up all hand.
The payoff is knowing when to take an ace, when a suit is dead, and when declarer has run out of trumps. Most defensive tricks that go missing were available to somebody keeping count.
How to build the habit
- Count trumps on every hand. Only trumps, until it is automatic.
- Say the shape out loud in your head when an opponent shows out — "West began with six hearts".
- Replay the hands you got wrong with all four hands up, and find the trick where the count was already available.
- Add the second suit when the first stops taking effort. Not before.
It takes a few hundred hands and it never stops paying. There is no convention on this site worth as much.