Originally posted by Squelchbelch
What's a sandbagger?

“Sandbagger” – A term used to define a chess player who has purposely (either through downright lying or game fixing) underinflated his or her chess abilities (usually his or her chess ratings). Since chess tournaments are organized by rankings, there are large incentives for players to try to play at lower levels. For those new to the game, this seems odd: usually you want to lie about how good you are, not how bad you are! Chess is strange due to the tournament structure. For example, one tournament might include rounds where players are ranked under 2100, under 1900, under 1500, and under 1200. A person ranked 1905 would be very unlikely to win the under 2100 tournament because he or she would be facing people with higher scores (all the way up to 2099!). However, simple lying or one or two purposely lost games can put that same chess player easily in the under 1900 range. This would be good for the chessplayer because for the under 1900 group, he would be a strong favorite for winning. “Sandbagging” is a sad result of people’s priorities. Especially when cash or prizes are given to tournament winners, players would much rather win a low ranking tournament round (ex. Under 1500) than have a better-than-average performance in a higher ranking round (ex. under 2100). Of course, the reality is the overwhelming majority of players in the under 2100 tournament round who didn’t win are “better” than the hypothetical under 1500 sandbagging champion. But at the end of the day, the sandbagger gets a trophy and his name printed up some where. That is all that is important to them. Because it skews and distorts the chess rating system, sandbagging is severely looked down upon. It tends, however, to be difficult to catch. The most common method of sandbagging, purposely losing games, can be hard to identify since people legitimately have cold snaps, losing streaks, and make huge blunders. People legitimately lose games all the time that they “should” have won. Thus, finding someone who loses games on purpose is difficult.

From "http://blueeyedrook.blogspot.com/2006/05/goofy-chess-terms.html"

Originally posted by Squelchbelch
What's a sandbagger?

Think of Mike Tyson entering an Ameteur boxing match with a real Ameteur. He's obviously a pro (or used to be) and would easily win.
Around here the word is usually thrown at a new player with a low provisional rating (p1200) who knows that they are a much higher rating. Accepting a match from a much lower rated player is sandbagging. Playing a weaker opponent who trusts that your displayed rating is about where you actually are. To sum it up it's basically a character/honesty issue. You betray an opponents trust if you sandbag him/her

Originally posted by kmac27
With a provisional rating obviously people of your level will not play you if you are 1900 until you reach a higher rating. Besides you can look at peoples graphs and tell if they are sandbagging.

It seems that the meaning of the term "sandbagger" has evolved somewhat. When I was playing a lot of tournaments in the 1980's, a sandbagger was someone who would lose on purpose in "cheap" tournaments so that they could get a low rating and win a class prize in a "big money" tournament. It was because of this activity that the USCF instituted rating floors.

Originally posted by wormwood
you've abandoned all your games 5 times already. sounds like a reasonable guess that you'll do it again.

Agreed. If I were lost I'd hang in there as long as possible and hope for a time out win.

Originally posted by alexstclaire
i want to hurt you all so badly,

So are we supposed to help you with this?
It was posted in the help forum, I was just wondering...
Seems like if we help you to hurt people we may be violating the TOS or
perhaps even someone's human rights....

Some people just like to be beaten properly btw... 😉