Dick Gregory, a civil rights activist, writer and former comedian, said, “When I lost my rifle, the army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the navy the captain goes down with the ship.”

This week, we are looking at captaincy during the bidding. When one player has described his hand accurately, he typically leaves the final decision to his partner.

In today’s deal, after one spade – two spades, what should South do?

Opener usually either passes (with no game aspirations) or jumps to game (with a strong hand). Sometimes, though, he is in the middle; game might or might not be good. Then opener makes a help-suit game-try, bidding a side suit – here, three diamonds. This asks partner in particular to look at his holdings in the bid suits. With good holdings – high cards or shortage – he jumps to game. With bad holdings, he signs off in three spades. In this deal, although North has only six high-card points, he has great spade and diamond holdings – especially that fourth trump. So he should happily jump to game.

West starts the defense with his three top hearts. After South ruffs the third, how should he continue?

South’s 10 tricks should be five spades, two diamonds, one club and two diamond ruffs in the dummy. Declarer draws one round of trumps from hand, plays a diamond to dummy’s king, leads the diamond 10 to his ace, ruffs a diamond with the spade eight, crosses back to hand with a spade, trumps his last diamond with the spade king, ruffs a heart, draws East’s third trump, and claims.