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
Father John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan Father John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan Father John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan is the protagonist in a series of 17 mystery novels by Roman Catholic priest and author Father Andrew Greeley. Fictionally, "Blackie" is a portly, little man. As the innocuous auxiliary bishop (under Cardinal Sean Cronin) and rector of the Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago, he travels the Archdiocese of Chicago and around the world (at Cardinal Cronin's ""See to it, Blackwood!"" charge) solving locked-room mysteries related to the Roman Catholic Church and its members. In his fictional biography, John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan was born in 1945 to a large Irish-American family,