Martha P. is a good friend and one of my favorite bridge partners. We’ve had a lot of fun playing bridge together, and have earned some points along the way. One of the things I’ve learned from Martha is the concept of “NOF”, which stands for “Not Our Fault.”
One of the most valuable ways I’ve found to improve my bridge game is to go over recent games’ hand records provided by the director. I’ll start with those hands on which we did poorly, but it’s also interesting to look at other boards to see if we really earned our good scores.
One time Martha and I got to a solid game contract that the field should be in, but not all pairs got to game. It was impossible to make the contract (there was a 5-0 trump split.) The pairs who wrongly did not get to game were rewarded for their poor bidding. The post-mortem analysis verified that we should have bid the game, and that we got a poor result through no fault our own. That’s the definition of an NOF!
Since there’s nothing you can do about an NOF, just remember that you did the right thing, even though you got a bad score. Just chalk it up to some bad luck, safe in the knowledge that it truly was Not Your Fault.
One final note:
An objective post-mortem cannot be based on hindsight.