Sandbagging is a real problem at 1500

It doesn't need to be 'on purpose'. If a person plays half-heartedly and loses 200 points through early resignations, sloppy play and playing while drunk etc, this is still rating manipulation. It means that the players they come up against at the lowest point of their tilt are being unfairly disadvantaged.

I am playing at a much lower level, but I have dropped, and I sure am not sandbagging. I have wondered what has happened, several thoughts occur to me:

1. I get into phases where I am trying out some new opening or defense; get clobbered for awhile as a result.

2. Like a lot of low-level players I have the rating I have because I blunder a lot. I'm a "well over 1300 player when I don't blunder." The same is true to a lesser degree of players at 1500 ... you need to get up over 2000 to be in the league where players blunder little. I get into runs where I blunder, and drop. Conversely when I don't blunder I probably look like a "sandbagger" to you.

3. At the lower levels there are players moving up rapidly, because they joined chess.com and are working up to their natural level. I have gotten plastered by players who quickly moved up hundreds of points above me afterwards. For whatever reason, I ran into a short string of these.

3. Cheating? Several times I have been just pasted by low-level players making really great moves, but on analysis they aren't making the best moves (they don't need to, because I am pretty crummy), so who knows?

Whatever, even the cheaters if that's what they are, playing chess here is a gift, and worrying about your online rating is immature. If you want to obsess about ratings, go play real tournaments. Otherwise, when you get beaten do the analysis and try to improve your game.

People might calibrate way higher than their real rating if they get lucky. Not proof of a Sandbagger. Want to see rampant sandbagging? Play on LC. Ugh it’s so annoying. I’m trying to get to 2000, beat 2 1950s, go up 10 points. Then get matched with like a 1770, they play like a GM, and I lose 7. I just abort those games now because there is no point in risking it to get +4. Their matchmaking system is so whack and there are so many cheaters!

Lichess ? In the random pool I haven't had much of a problem maybe each big tournament there's usually 1-2 cheaters but usually you can outfarm them in games I dunno maybe it's just me but I haven't really had much of a problem

I once was refunded rating for 5 rapid games all in the same day on there lol. At least they catch some of them and refund you. I think it’s pretty easy to make multiple accounts on there and the cheating is definitely worse than on chess.com. I shouldn’t be getting matched with players -150 rating than me anyway , and they typically will blow you off the board.

that and the disproportionate amount of games with the black pieces. It’s easy to abort games and people definitely abuse it. I shouldn’t be getting black 5 games in a row while trying to increase my rating.

i just train on there and use chess.com rating as my metric.

I get beaten by 2100s sometimes it happens even when they aren't cheating I have had 50/50 win rates against 2500s before

if you get black five times in a row ? I got white multiple times in a row before if it's randomly generated it should do that I don't see how it being the black pieces makes it any worse

You can't tilt 300 points of elo that's ridiculous. The only way to do that is to not try for ages, which is basically sandbagging.

It is random but players will abort games till they get white pieces, it’s pretty easy to do apparently because it happens often to me often. I get white and the player aborts and then I’ll get rematched with them by chance and they have white and play! Imagine playing in an OTB tourney and you only get black 6/7 games… probably won’t be a good day for your rating!

It is random but players will abort games till they get white pieces, it’s pretty easy to do apparently because it happens often to me often. I get white and the player aborts and then I’ll get rematched with them by chance and they have white and play! Imagine playing in an OTB tourney and you only get black 6/7 games… probably won’t be a good day for your rating!