Some of the conversations after a hand has been played still escapes me some times. As an example, I had the following hand today: 6:6 5:5 3:3 2:2 6:3 6:1 5:1. My partner, Paul, passes on the bid which is a bad sign. In our group, a bid of 30 means that you have a splash/plunge support hand. That is you can take three tricks and then punt with a low six. I still go for the plunge bid. Paul opens with the 1:1. I take some time to consider and finally play the 6:1. Paul then “gets creative,” and plays the 1:0. He assumed that there was a chance that I held both the 6:1 and the 5:1. We were able to squeak by when the 6:5 and 6:4 fell which allowed the 6:3 to walk.

There were people at the table who argued that I should have discarded the 5:1 on the first trick since the 6:1, and the 6:3 are both walkers under the 6:6. Which I still don’t understand. I kept the 5:1 as a possible walker under the 5:5. The 6:3 is still the weak bone in either case. It absolutely needs to walk under the 6:6. Wouldn’t you want more distance to when you are forced to play your walker? That way the opponents will have to decide to discard a potential stopper.