Blackwood convention Blackwood convention In the partnership card game contract bridge, the Blackwood convention is a popular bidding convention that was developed by Easley Blackwood. It is used to explore the partnership's possession of aces, kings and in some variants, the queen of trumps, to judge more precisely whether slam is likely to be a good contract. Two versions of Blackwood are common: "standard" Blackwood, developed by Easley in 1933, and "Roman Key Card" Blackwood ("RKC" or "RKCB"), named for the Italian team which invented it. Standard Blackwood enables one partner to count partnership aces and kings in general. Key card variants
F-A-E Sonata F-A-E Sonata The F-A-E Sonata, a four-movement work for violin and piano, is a collaborative musical work by three composers: Robert Schumann, the young Johannes Brahms, and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich. It was composed in Düsseldorf in October 1853. The sonata was Schumann's idea as a gift and tribute to violinist Joseph Joachim, whom the three composers had recently befriended. Joachim had adopted the Romantic German phrase ""Frei aber einsam"" ("free but lonely") as his personal motto. The composition's movements are all based on the musical notes F-A-E, the motto's initials, as a musical cryptogram. Schumann assigned each movement to