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
Gary Blackwood (author) Gary Blackwood (author) Gary Blackwood (born October 23, 1945) is an American author known for "The Shakespeare Stealer" trilogy. Born in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Blackwood sold his first story when he was nineteen. In 1998, he published "The Shakespeare Stealer", a historical fiction novel about an orphan, Widge, who is sent to steal "Hamlet" from William Shakespeare and The Lord Chamberlain's Men. After it won the 1999 ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Blackwood published two sequels, "Shakespeare's Scribe" (2000) and "Shakespeare's Spy" (2003). Since then, he has continued writing historical fiction, such as "Around the World in 100 Days" (2010),