Sandbagging control

I really think something needs to be done about the absolute epidemic of sandbagging on chess.com.

I have seen people trying to dismiss this in the past, the truth is, this isn't based on opinion, but on facts. I will share a list of my recent opponents ratings, showing current rating and highest rating. I will not share user names, this is purely to paint a very clear picture of the current situation.

All of these were from 5 minute blitz games played today:

720/924

707/731

759/995

639/860

565/1279

733/1179

724/1066

695/797

732/911

684/722

501/866

705/733

737/771

747/926

686/748

697/736

750/824

681/1007

760/969

730/905

Effectively half of these games were against sandbaggers. This is just showing their blitz ratings, it gets a lot worse if you check their other ratings. This shows that it isn't just the odd games, but almost every other game, hence it is out of control!

A simple answer, would be to hold players to their highest rating. This way, even if a player tried to crash their rating for an unfair advantage, they would only be matched up based on their highest achieved rating, not their current rating.By applying this to tournaments too, you could ensure that there would be nothing to gain from this form of cheating. It would then also make it much fairer for players to work on improving their own ELO without the fear of playing people who are basically just stealing ELO off of them.

To be honest, this is just a terrible combination of enabling bullying and cheating by not addressing it directly. This would then greatly reduce the workload of mods having to assess all of the sandbagging reports. I am reporting every game against sandbaggers regardless of if I win lose or draw. They need to be called out regardless...

A fluctuation of 200 points in rating from peak is not uncommon and can happen to anyone.

In addition, the site uses the Glicko rating system and on account creation asks for the player's strength which sets a default initial rating. A new player that's really 800 strength that creates an account at 1600, is going show a much higher highest rating than their eventual strength will put them at. Add to that a lucky win, or one by disconnect/abandonment earlier on can result in a higher value as well, one that doesn't correlate to actual strength.

If you find members that have previously played at a much higher rating in the past, over a long period ,and now are a lot lower, you can report them.

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8562517-how-do-i-report-someone

While something like a rating floor could be useful, it shouldn't be at their peak level and has to be designed around the way the rating system works.

I get that, but these players are playing way higher than their ratings. This is just a way of saying sandbagging is acceptable. If a player chooses to start at 1600, then they have chosen to swim at the deep end to start with. That shouldn’t mean that lower rated players are punished for others choices. It’s just a vicious cycle. All it does is put off newer players who have no hope of improving and will ultimately give up on the game because of a few rotten apples. Also, it’s been quite a regular case of playing against players with a max rating of over 500 pts higher than their current rating. It’s so blatant, you just need to see the way they play, seeing their profiles only confirms what you already know…

Has chess.com said anything about tickling the sandbagging? I had 12 games in a row against sandbaggers the other night. It was nearly 3 hours of agony.

Martin, that doesn't explain the three hours I wasted against Smurfs the other night I reported them all chess.com hasn't even so much as sent a report acknowledgment I was a premium member for two years the least they could do is acknowledge the problem.

Most reports don't get any replies.

My observation in open 1|0 arenas shows that there are many new low rated accounts each day which get into top 3 of these arenas within the first couple of days. Then they get some relatively high rating so they tend to "lose" many games between arenas getting their low rating back.

Huge number of medals are "won" by people doing that and when these people get banned the medals just disappear. I know that chess.com keeps the history of tournaments so it would be great if medals from banned accounts moved to active players who took subsequent places in tournaments.

Unfortunately, these people can "win" dozens of medals in several days while the support has not even started reviewing their cases.