Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes are professional bridge players originally from Italy, but since 2011 playing for Monaco.
[1] In September 2015, they were publicly accused of cheating by orienting a played card to show a missing high honour (ace, king or queen) in the led suit at the European Bridge Championship in 2014.
On May 1, 2015, during the Italian Open Teams Championship, Nunes made a defensive play which enabled him and Fantoni to defeat opponents' slam contract by three tricks.
The play, and the rapidity with which it was made, were considered sufficiently unusual for the deal to be referred by FIGB to the National Sports Judge for adjudication.
[9][10] Maaijke Mevius, a Dutch amateur bridge player and trained scientist, noticed a correlation between horizontal or vertical orientation of the cards played by Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes and their honor holdings in the suit.
In September 2015, Mevius emailed the evidence to Boye Brogeland, who, after consultation with Ishmael Del'Monte, Australian bridge professional and vice-chair of the WBF High Level Players Commission,[11] and American player Brad Moss, decided to issue an ultimatum to Fantoni, a personal acquaintance of his, to come forward with a confession before the findings were published.
On September 13, 2015, American expert Kit Woolsey published an article on the Bridge Winners website demonstrating a statistical proof of Mevius's hypothesis.
[1][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Monaco was to have been represented at the 2015 Bermuda Bowl in Chennai, India by a team consisting of Fulvio Fantoni, Claudio Nunes, Geir Helgemo, Tor Helness, Franck Multon and playing captain Pierre Zimmermann.
[26] In August 2021 Fantoni was included as a replacement player in the Italy squad for the European Online Bridge Team Championship.
Further, their partners and teammates were subject to mandatory forfeiture of all masterpoints, titles and ranks earned during the four years preceding the final of the 2015 Spingold Trophy.
[4] It found in their favour, saying that: "the majority of the Panel concludes that the exchange of information through the Code has not been proven to its comfortable satisfaction and rules that the appeal filed by the Players shall be upheld.