AG asked: "How do you count losers and why would you want to?"
"Counting losers" comes up in at least two different contexts. The one I hope you have heard of is as part of a declarer planning how she will play the hand, particularly in suit contracts. For example playing in 4H you may look at your hand and dummy and see:
You Dummy
S Axxx S xx
H AKxxx H QJxx
D Kx D Qxx
C xx C Axxx
Counting suit by suit from your hand (you normally do this from the hand with the brlong trump suit) you expect to lose 3 spades, 0 hearts, 1 diamond, and 1 club for a total of 5 losers - or 2 more than you can afford. You can get rid of 2 of these by ruffing 2 of your spade losers in dummy. Of course you need to still have trumps left in dummy to do so. So your plan would be to ruff these losers before you draw trumps. Given you have to lose a spade trick before you can start ruffing you probably would focus on the spade suit before doing anything else - and ruff the 4th spade with one of the HQ or J to avoid being overuffed. Hopefully this example helps you see how counting losers as part of your declarer plan is useful.
The other context is in the bidding - in some bidding situations you can count your own losers and estimate those of your partner from their bidding and this combination can be a useful guide to help decide how high to bid, particularly on distributional hands. It complements the point count approach to evaluating your hand. I think this is better left to look at in the future (possibly at a separate lesson), but mention it in case that applies to the situation you heard.
There is already an article on the website on how to count losers, including during the bidding when you can't see dummy's hand.
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