PSYCHING your opponent out

About a week ago, I went to a local tournament and played an opponent rated about 1850-1900 or so. It was the last round and we ended up with a draw. We started talking after the tournament and as it turns out, he's a full time chess teacher.

I don't know why, but he confided a lot of things to me. For example, he told me that he's a "sandbagger" who goes to local tourneys and loses on purpose to bring his rating down so that he can go to big tourneys and win a lot of money.

He mentioned another thing though, that bothered me more. I noticed that during our tournament game, he was a bit annoying. He would walk around and not move when it was his turn, he would put on his ipod and sometimes glare at me, he would eat and then smack his mouth really loudly, etc. I figured that he was just an extremely annoying person by nature, but after our game, he told me he did those things on purpose and to all of his opponents to psych them out and annoy them.

He said that everyone does that type of thing and that I might as well do it too since everyone else does it. Is it true? Do opponents deliberately annoy and psych out their opponents? It was very surprising because he's a chess coach too, so why would he do something that was immoral?

I personally believe that psyching out your opponent and winning that way is NOT real chess. But it doesn't seem fair if other people can exploit that vulnerablity and gain an unfair edge against you. What do you guys think? Thanks.

Sandbagging and attempting to win by annoying/intimidating/distracting the opponent are rather disreputable practices.

That's precisely why I am "antisocial" when it comes to playing OTB chess. As long as people like the people you described go to chess clubs, I refuse to join a chess club.

I hate to break it to you, but these types of people go everywhere.

Most people I have played don't do those things. If you played a tournament it must have been several games/rounds, did all your opponents behave like that ?

What is scary is that players like these get idolized and teach this nonsense to kids.  It's bad enough that there are coaches endorsing [e4,Bc4,Qh5] as a suitable White opening repertoire for kids these days.

This is one of the reasons our OTB club tends to have players who "only" play within our friendly circles ... It is easier to be a jerk to a total stranger than somebody you'll meet next week at the club.

Though, playing devil's advocate here ....  hasn't gamesmanship gone hand in hand with any "must win at all costs" situation in sports  ... why do we feel chess needs to be immune?   Even the heavy hitting Super GMs (yesterday and present) have indulged in a little "distracting" behavior.