[Help] Programming in Python

I'm having trouble finding a way to count the number of occurrences in a list.  So I'm writing a program to play cards at the moment, and I'm appending the first six cards in the "deckOfCards" to the "handOfCards"   Now I want to see if I have multiple cards of the same suit in hand.  Normally I would use handOfCards.count(blablabla), but my list is made up of separate string objects so Python currently only counts the first one.  Since there are numbers and letters involved I can't change the whole list to an integer either :(

TLDR: How do I count the number of occurrences of each suit in deckOfCards. 

deckOfCards = ("2H","3H","4H","5H","6H","7H","8H","9H","10H","JH","QH","KH","AH",
                       "2S","3S","4S","5S","6S","7S","8S","9S","10S","JS","QS","KS","AS",
                       "2C","3C","4C","5C","6C","7C","8C","9C","10C","JC","QC","KC","AC",
                       "2D","3D","4D","5D","6D","7D","8D","9D","10D","JD","QD","KD","AD")