“Do you play Blackwood?” a woman player asked an opponent at the Midwest Regional Bridge Tournament Saturday at the Pfister Hotel.
She was referring to the Blackwood Convention, one of the most popular systems at arriving at a grand slam or a small slam.
Her opponent a pleasant-faced insurance man from Indianapolis, winced and then answered:
“Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.”
The woman walked away and Easley Blarckwood the man who invented the Blackwood Convention continued an interview with a reporter:
The Blackwood Convention came about when I found myself in a seven spades contract in 1933. When the dummy went down, I saw we were missing the ace of spades. Then I knew I had to find some way of locating all the aces and kings before playing a slam hand.
Since Inventing the system, Blackwood has become a syndicated bridge columnist. His columns appears in 86 newspapers, including 14 published in England.
One more word from Blackwood: He says his system is the most over-abused in bridge, says it should be used only on 40 percent of the average hand.