[luis]

Tips for counting declarer's distribution.

*) Don't rely in bids from obfuscated or inexperienced players, sometimes they just bid the wrong thing.
If you are playing against good players then pay a lot of attention to the bidding, there's
a lot of information to get from the auction to help you count the hand.

*) When a player announces a balanced hand assume any 4432. It's the most likely pattern, only
when a 4432 hand can't be possible try to find if declarer has a 5332 or 4333 hand.

*) If a player has a balanced hand and shows up with a five card suit then try to find the doubleton
and you have the whole distribution of the hand: 5332.

*) After 1c-1h or 1d-1h if declarer doesn't rebid 1s assume he doesn't have 4 spades. If he does rebid 4 spades
then he should also have at least 4 clubs.

*) After 1m-1M;2NT declarer can have a concealed four card suit in the other major.

*) When declarer opens 1d and shows up with 3 diammonds assume he is exactly 4-4-3-2.

*) Work on assumption until proven otherwise, assume a 2 level preempt shows a six-card suit, a 3 level preempt
a 7 card suit and a 4 level preempt an 8 card suit.

*) You can get more inferences about what the opponents didn't bid rather than what they did. If a player opens
3d and they play 2d as Flannery then he probably has a 6 card diammond suit. If 2d is a weak two then 3d should
show a 7 card suit. If a player opens 1sp and over 2d redeclares 2 spades he doesn't have a 4 card heart suit.
Pay a lot of attention about what they didn't bid.

*) When your pd leads and dummy comes down add the number of cards you have in each suit to the number of cards
in dummy, substract that from 13 and try to guess how the remainder cards are distributed between declarer and
pd based on the bidding.

*) When redeclaring a suit declarer usually shows a 6 card suit if he skips more than 2 bids. Example:
1h-1s;2h (skips 1nt,2c,2d). If not then declarer can have a 5 card suit or 6 card suit (1h-2c;2h)

*) A 1nt response to 1h or 1s doesn't mean responder has a balanced hand, he can have a weak distributional hand
without support for pd's major.

*) If playing 2/1 a rebid of 2M after 1M-2m can show a 5 card suit more frequently than playing SAYC.