Easley R. Blackwood Sr.; Devised Contract Bridge Strategy

Easley R. Blackwood Sr., 89, who devised one of the best-known bidding conventions in the game of contract bridge. His “Blackwood convention” allows a player to tell his partner how many aces and kings he holds. He offered his idea to Ely Culbertson, the reigning bridge authority of the 1930s, but Culbertson declined to encourage a rival to his own more complicated, four-five no-trump convention. Despite that, the Blackwood convention was in use by nearly all bridge players by the early 1940s. Blackwood, a retired insurance executive, wrote a dozen books on bridge. He was general manager of the American Contract Bridge League from 1968 to 1971 and once estimated that he had taught the game to more than 10,000 people. He picked up the game as an 11-year-old in Birmingham, Ala., “when my parents and grandmother needed a fourth, and I was willing.” In 1984, he said he did not play any other card games. “Bridge is so superior that the bridge player gives up other games,” he said. In Indianapolis on Friday.