FANTUNES REVEALED by Bill Jacobs

[PrecisionL]

Just received this book today from Amazon, Fantunes Revealed, 2012 by Bill Jacobs.

Also available from Master Point Press in paper back or e-book.

 

The author plays an adaptation of FANTUNES with a slightly reduced level of complexity.

 

The chapter: Fantunes by the numbers, summarizes the results of 2723 deals played by Fantunes on BBO's vu-graph.

 

2723 deals, net IMPs won = 1817, or 0.67 IMPs per deal on deals Fantunes opened the bidding.

1676 deals, net IMPs won = 645, or 0.38 IMPs per deal where the contract was the same at both tables.

 

{MY} CONCLUSION: Superior card play [both by declarer and the defenders - 7/26] accounted for just over {half} {57%} of the IMPs won, while superior bidding (bidding judgment & system) accounted for {under half} {42%} of the IMP gains.

 

[Edited 7/26/12]

{Edited 8/14/12 @ 3 pm EDT for better clarity}

[aguahombre]

I don't suppose any of those could be attributed to inferior card play by the opponents or their judgement in competitive auctions?

[the hog]

Just for your information, Bill has represented Australia a few times. He is in a regular partnership which has played Fantunes for some years.

[aguahombre]

That certainly clears up my question about whether the raw statistics for play by Fantoni and Nunes reflect the quality of the opponents' play.

[nigel_k]

Fantunes may be superior, but IMO to be convincing you either go completely with the scientific approach and attempt to hold all other factors constant, or you go completely non-empirical and just look at the situations where there are likely to be gains and losses.

 

Just looking at hand results where a pair with outstanding card play and bidding judgment used one system exclusively and did very well with it, is not an indication of anything we don't already know.

 

If these kind of analyses were persuasive, we would all be playing Blue Club.

[1eyedjack]

If you do well in the same contract as others, you cannot necessarily dismiss system as irrelevant. How well the defence fares may be a function of (inter alia) the amount of information available to the defence, and the auction is part of that information.

[mike777]

1) In the forums we are told and shown that learning to play the cards is much much more important for 99.99%(me) of us here.

2) In the forums we(me) all love to play a newish system that most dont play that is shown to win and be fun.

[daveharty]

Why is this in the "Non-Natural System Discussion" forum? I thought Fantunes was, by and large, quite natural.

[NickRW]

Why is this in the "Non-Natural System Discussion" forum? I thought Fantunes was, by and large, quite natural.

 

Because, in the minds of many, "natural" = "standard" and 2/1. Even the likes of Acol and K/S struggle to be regarded as "natural" here despite the fact that they are essentially very similar to "standard".

[PrecisionL]

Fantunes may be superior, but IMO to be convincing you either go completely with the scientific approach and attempt to hold all other factors constant, or you go completely non-empirical and just look at the situations where there are likely to be gains and losses.

 

Just looking at hand results where a pair with outstanding card play and bidding judgment used one system exclusively and did very well with it, is not an indication of anything we don't already know.

 

If these kind of analyses were persuasive, we would all be playing Blue Club.

 

Surely you jest about Blue Club in today's bridge environment ...

 

Anyway, Bill Jacobs' analysis is a reasonable attempt to quantify the FANTUNES System. Doubters, can do their own analysis of the BBO vu-graph files and present their findings.

 

I am amazed at all the negative comments ...

[gordontd]

1) In the forums we are told and shown that learning to play the cards is much much more important for 99.99%(me) of us here.

Are we?

[semeai]

I bought the e-book. It's 173 pages long. The book mixes together friendly discussions of the logic of the system, definitions of bids, and frequent example hands. The bidding trees are roughly the complexity of (and very similar to, though cleaned up, and with more explanation) Dan Neill's bidding tree for Fantunes, which the author cites as one of his sources.

 

The goal of the book is not to describe exactly what Fantoni and Nunes play, so the author has made occasional modifications (which it appears the author plays in a partnership of his), usually commenting thereon. For example, over 2♦-2♥ (artificial relay), the responses are modified slightly to make them a bit more symmetric, hence potentially easier to remember. The author also does not describe slam methods used by Fantoni and Nunes (e.g. Turbo), except in passing by way of suggesting that the reader instead use his/her own, and also leaves most of the system over 1NT and 2NT to the reader, with hints on key points to include to deal with the distributionally wide-ranging 1NT opening, for example.

 

The system is quite detailed and complicated. The opening is of course quite natural, and the responses are mostly straightforward, but thereafter many specialized conventional bids show up. There are occasional hints for simplifying the system where possible, but they're not very frequent. The reader can work on paring away more to come up with a bare-bones version, but it would take a lot of work to separate the truly-necessary from the very-nice-to-have from the fairly-useful and to come up with workable simpler alternatives.

 

Toward the end, there is a seven page summary bidding tree, as well as quite a few quiz questions, including a separate page of problems just on the Fantunes version of Gazzilli.

 

***

 

To add my $.02 to the discussion of imps per deal: It's quite difficult to separate system wins from bidding judgement wins. It seems entirely possible, even likely, that the .29 imps/board Fantoni and Nunes apparently win in the bidding comes largely or entirely from their bidding judgement.

 

Fantunes seems like a fun system, and I enjoy fun/different systems. I do think however that card play and bidding judgement are each quite a bit more important than system, at least once your system is reasonably well fleshed out.

[Cyberyeti]

Thanks for the reviews, have just ordered the book, I was looking for a fun new challenge, had mulled over forming a casual partnership specifically to give Fantunes a try, and this book (and the post here to tell me about it) has given me the kick I needed to try it.

[aguahombre]

I am amazed at all the negative comments ...

I didn't notice any negative comments about these two great players, the system, or the stats presented.

 

What I noticed were quite appropriate questions about whether we can "conclude" from those stats --or from any stats--anything about the effectiveness of that, or any, system.

[bluecalm]

I will check the book out :)

As my contribution: all constructive FN biddings from vugraph in tree format (.bss) with alerts included which you can browse using BBO .bss viewer:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86311885/fantunes.bss

:)

[Zelandakh]

Thanks for the reviews, have just ordered the book, I was looking for a fun new challenge, had mulled over forming a casual partnership specifically to give Fantunes a try, and this book (and the post here to tell me about it) has given me the kick I needed to try it.

Wow, I am shocked! Sound openings and narrow-range 2 bids sounds like completely the opposite approach from the natural one for you.

[rhm]

I will check the book out :)

As my contribution: all constructive FN biddings from vugraph in tree format (.bss) with alerts included which you can browse using BBO .bss viewer:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86311885/fantunes.bss

:)

How can I get hold of the .bss viewer?

 

Rainer Herrmann

[Cyberyeti]

Wow, I am shocked! Sound openings and narrow-range 2 bids sounds like completely the opposite approach from the natural one for you.

Precisely why I wanted to try it.

[bluecalm]

How can I get hold of the .bss viewer?

 

Rainer Herrmann

 

My understanding is that bidedit.exe needed to open those is automatically installed with old BBO client which you may find here: http://www.bridgebase.com/intro/v2problems.php

You should be able to just double click .bss files to open once you install it.

[rhm]

My understanding is that bidedit.exe needed to open those is automatically installed with old BBO client which you may find here: http://www.bridgebase.com/intro/v2problems.php

You should be able to just double click .bss files to open once you install it.

 

Thanks

 

Rainer Herrmann

[han]

It's quite difficult to separate system wins from bidding judgement wins. It seems entirely possible, even likely, that the .29 imps/board Fantoni and Nunes apparently win in the bidding comes largely or entirely from their bidding judgement.

 

Yes indeed.

[Free]

It's well known that Fantoni can play the cards extremely well. When BBO used DF (Deep Finesse) instead of GIB, commentators used the term "Deep Fantoni" (he did better than Deep Finesse).

 

In theory the system performs good after 1-level openings and is high variance after 2-level openings. I used to play a modified version as well and we concluded that the theory is right. We did very well after 1-level openings, but the 2-level openings were too high variance for us.

 

Their style of overcalling and doubling isn't what you could call a standard approach. Somehow they are able to cope with that very well.

 

Their leads aren't popular either, but they make it work for them.

 

There has been talk about "Italian signals", but that's not confirmed. This is not meant as a cheating accusation, just a fact that there are/have been suspicions.

 

All things considered, they do a lot of things very differently than mainstream and are able to perform. This makes it's impossible to determine the reason why they do so well.

 

Something else that may be (slightly) important is the fact that they have good team mates, that must count for some of the imps as well. ;)

[pigpenz]

I imagine this has been an age old question

the system or the the players?

 

we have had the Blue Club and look at what Granovettor and Rubin(I believe it was Ron, Read new Bridge World) did with their big club system, they

killed Bridge World in the 70's...but in reality who plays either of these systems today? the system helps

but having certain bids in any system gives you an advantage.....Belladonna, Forquet, Granovettor, Rubin, and

Fantunes they will succeed with any system they play even if its old fashioned Charles Goren Style.

[dake50]

Anyway, Bill Jacobs' analysis is a reasonable attempt to quantify the FANTUNES System. Doubters, can do their own analysis of the BBO vu-graph files and present their findings.

 

***

What reason is purported for this anecdotal comparison?

Has it statistical validity? I see none, nor none claimed.

Thus it is presented as a curiosity, NOTHING MORE!

Doubter's merely claim a peer review of "no basis".

To suggest that this comparison is valid BECAUSE doubters

have not done a disproving analysis is backward to any science.

The publisher has the burden of proof!

[EricK]

It seems a reasonable way to estimate the effect of bidding system. The number of IMPS gained when the contract is the same is a reasonable estimate of the difference in skill in the play. Obviously system has some effect here - if it reveals more about declarer's hand the defense will be easier, if it reveals less, defense will be harder; also it might make it easier or harder for the opps to enter the auction (but this can work both ways, sometimes bids by the defenders help the defense, sometimes they help declarer). All in all, though, these effects should largely cancel out. So given this figure, it is reasonable to assume that the difference in skill carries over to hands where they contract is not the same. So if they win more IMPS per hand on those hands, then it is reasonable to attribute those extra IMPS to the bidding system.

 

Or am I missing something?