Tournament Sandbaggers

Recently, I checked out the winners of a tournament I played in (1001-1200). The winner had a rating of 1624, an average opponent rating of 1554, a best win of 2065, and a highest rating of 1737!!!! This doesn't give other people a chance at this tournament. There should be a way to prevent sandbagging (dropping your rating on purpose to get into a lower rated tournament). For instance (even though I know this is a bad idea) tournaments based on either your average opponents rating, your best win rating, or your highest ever rating. comments?

The rating of players in official tournaments especially in the ranges 1001-1200 and 1201-1400 is suspect as the minimum number of games played is not sufficient to establish a player's rating.

Minimum five games completed for basic members and zero games completed for premium members.

Additionally over the long period it takes a tournament to end players will improve.

No sandbaggging required. Rest assured, if you have peaked, you have no chance to ever do well in the official 1001-1200 range tournaments.

I can understand sandbagging in OTB tournaments where there is prize money to be won, but to intentionally lose a bunch of games to lower your rating so you can win an "internet trophy" on this site would be pretty pathetic. 

I joined a tournament here on chess.com, it wasn't restricted by rating or anything, but they were my first few games.  A few games and a few weeks later my rating jumps higher than the starting 1200, like TadDude said no sandbagging required.

Now that same user you were talking about hic2482w, if he'd alreaedy completed 100 games or something I could see what you mean, but we all have to start somewhere.

Five games is not enough to set a standard for a player.  twenty games might be better.

The person I am talking about has finished 357 games and there are 18 current games. And not only in this tournament, many other tournaments I have seen where they have joined chess.com a few years ago, played 500 games before the tournament, but their rating is low and coincidentally skyrockets at the time of the tournament. I looked through that players tournament games, and that player crushed all opponents.

TadDude, I dont understand your comment. can you explain?

"No sandbaggging required. Rest assured, if you have peaked, you have no chance to ever do well in the official 1001-1200 range tournaments."

Well, my mistake then.  That is pretty dirty :) but that's why sandbagged is one of the dirtiest things you can call a chess player... but then again online it's pretty harmless.  If you go to some big open where the prize fund for 1200-1399 is thousands of dollars and a year later you look up the guy who won it and their rating is now 1700 you might feel somewhat cheated (although it may have been a combination of inactivity (low initial rating) and legitimate improvement.

TadDude may have been commenting on the difference between online tourneys which are just for fun, and national/international sanctioned tourneys (like FIDE) where you win money and sandbagging is really dirty.  Also that turn based ratings here are inflated vs such tournaments so in an OTB tourney your rating would most likely be lower... although it was a bit of a jab because no one peaks in 1100s-1200s at that level it's just a matter of wanting to get better and you will over time (in contrast to titled or some who are nearly titled players who may work very hard and not make much or any progress).

These are the players in the final round of the tournaments you would be registered in.

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=21&round=5

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=3827&round=4

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=4517&round=4

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=5427&round=4

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=6805&round=4

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=8732&round=4

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings.html?id=11306&round=4

This is the tournament  http://www.chess.com/tournament/3rd-chesscom-theme-tournament---reversed-sicilian-1001-1200. It started 2009 May 01.

Notice the player being falsely accused of sandbagging joined 2009 April 16.

Notice how the rating of the player being falsely accused of sandbagging rose steadily without dropping below 1200.

Which is why I said over time, you can't expect day to day progress, but we both know this so it's not worth mentioning

 Sandbagging in OTB tournaments to win prize money would be pretty pathetic too.

Thanks TadDude for explaining that.

Winning a 1200 trophy is like bragging that you kissed your sister lol.

Too true :)