Anybody got any tips on avoiding these people? Its killing my ratings and driving me crazy!

Numbers mean nothing you shouldent avoid playing someone because it hurt your rating because in all honesty its just a number and it cannot accuratly show the strength of a player

Sandbaggers are annoying. If you suspect your opponent does this you should report them and block them.

The trick is to play up any chance you get. If you lose, well hey, the opponent was higher rated anyway.

One bit of warning if you end up playing a sandbagger: If the game is close and they manage to win, they will run and never play you again. If the game was close and they lose, they will want a rematch. Don't give it to them. This is only if you realize during the game you're playing a sandbagger.

Every now and then over on playchess, I'll get pitted against a 2000 pretending to be a 1500. Right away during the game I noticed they are expertly booked and don't fall for subtle positional moves that a 1500 would clean miss. I realize what I'm up against and give them the best fight I can. I win about half the time, and the half I don't they always refuse rematch. That's the key technique of the sanbagger. It's not just about pretending to be a beginner or lower club-level player, but it's also the cherry on top for them to refuse the rematch if they win.

I suggested in another thread that, Chess.com employ a placement system for all players. This would not only get rid of sand bagging users with multiple accounts, who want to take advantage of the RD factor, but it would prevent players of a particular strength from gaining access to tournaments/games they don't belong in, gaining easy trophies/wins and rating points.

This is very unfair for a player of a particular strength to suddenly lose 40 rating points in a pair of games to a player. If their opponent would have been rated properly,they might have only lost 6 or 8. Allowing this is to go on is throwing the rating system badly out of whack.

The other reason I recommend this is for the titled players that come here. I think it is less than dignifying to ask players rated well in excess of 2000 elo to start at 1200.

BTW, if they sandbag the rating exam. and they start beating everyone, boot em...

very good comments..thanks to everyone..question..since the ratings on this site are somwhat messed up due to sandbagging...how do you know what your true rating is? I'm trying to figure out where I am in the overall scheme of things!

I have had a couple hundred games online games here, no reason yet to suspect sandbagging. Maybe I have been lucky.

I'd say your correspondence rating is pretty close to being as accurate as could be. It might be a little high, but not by more than 20 or 30 points. If you played longer live games, your rating would probably go up 200 or more points easily. These are relative to the chess.com rating system. I still haven't figured out where we would stand relative to FIDE or USCF... my suspicion is, if we played in a large city such as NYC, probably only about 1300 or 1400...