Outrageous sandbagging and hard evidence(CHEATING!)

Running Chess Tournaments
21

Locally we have several players on lithium-based medications which can drastically effect their playing strength. One in particular has a legitimate win over an IM but is now floored at 1700. I don’t know the lowest rated player to which he has lost , but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was someone under 1000.

We also had a player who drove 8 hours to come to a tournament. Without any sleep Friday night he proceeded to get crushed by much weaker players in the first two rounds on Saturday, got a bye in round 3 but after a night’s sleep played OK on Sunday.

I’ve had suspicians about 2 other players, but they sometimes play very badly in games they definitely wouldn’t want to throw, so it is very difficult to say whether they occasionally sandbag or are just wildly inconsistent. It’s not an accusation that I would want to make unless I was very confident of being correct.

22

Thank you for suggesting that Ogunmefun might have a mental problem besides greed and bad ethics, but alas no. He’s a perfectly healthy Nigerian who is tired of coming close to a big chess prize and decides to maximize his chances of winning by illegally sandbagging points. He wasn’t sleep either even if he was a 700 barely knows how the pieces move! Ogunmefun is every bit 2250 he has intentionally held his rating down for the last several years

23

I believe that the player should be officially sanctioned, name put in a once a year publishing in the back of chess life, have the result nullified(no players should gain or lose points from the result), be barred from playing chess for 6 months to a year. Next offense barred for life

24

Don’t raise your eyebrows in the last 5 years i know of two people who have won 10,000 clear by cheating and even when i advised the TD nothing was done. One of the players a man in his 40s played the event in D class were he could only manage 3.5 out of 9, comes back one year later and wins the C class(a whole class up) by a larger margin than anyone has ever won a section in the events history (8.5 out of 9 giving a courtesy draw). No he wasn’t lucky or practiced anymore, his assistant in the scam, came back a year later and also walked away with 10grand. You have to patrol your section hard if you go to a big tourney!

Sincerely , ChessCop :slight_smile:

25

1.5 points out of clear first at the biggest class prize under 2200 section of all time 6.5 out of 9. He was playing the strongest experts in the country and trashing them. Then losses to 600,700, 1100, and draws a 1400 and 1200. Criminal!! CRIMINAL!

26

One of the problems with suspending or otherwise sanctioning players is that there are due process requirements for that in the USCF Bylaws and code of ethics. (If there weren’t, I’m sure courts would take a dim view of that if they were asked to get involved.)

27

How much money was this prize? It seems that there is a case to be made for a money floor for this player, if not at 2200, then at least at 2000.

As far as the other tournament is concerned, it’s not unreasonable to change the results to forfeit wins for the other players, or a forfeit draw. Clearly they shouldn’t get the “benefit” of rating points just for being paired with a sandbagger. Also, suspensions are not out of line.

As Mike points out, though, there is the question of proof and due process. Sigh.

Alex Relyea

28

I am not a lawyer(nor have i played one on TV), but this would be a civil matter, the legal bar in such cases is the preponderance of the evidence(there are some criminal statutes to bring a case if you tried to violate his civil rights, which is almost non sequitor here). Further the uscf has no obligation to allow him to play chess in its events, and can not be compelled to do so. The only concern the USCF might have is a cause for libel. Though this would be easily avoided as long as the USCF itself did not publicly anounce the reason. Though the truth is a 100% defence to libel/slander in US courts. In any case have a policy of do not anounce the reason publicly and that would be sufficent to avoid libel. “We reserve the right to refuse service” as long as it is not based upon color creed, race or religion is a sound and tested legal premise that has little ability to be debated in US courts. It would be difficult to have a bases to claim that your rights have been violated because you have been restricted from participation in an organization such as the USCF. A player can be excluded from the USCF tournaments for any reason the uscf sees fit, except for causes that would violate a players civil rights. The uscf would have to state no reason whatsoever except that the decision was not based upon anything that would violate a player’s civil protections.

29

The USCF is not a court and does not have to have any due process whatsoever. It is of course expected that the USCF would have a process for evaluating a claim, and the USCF does have a group that examines such cases. The decisions the USCF makes in regards to its internal workings, and acceptances and allowances it provides to individuals is solely up to the USCF. This of course in exception to when an individual’s civil protections are being violated. You have no civil protection to play chess or be a member of the USCF. You have no civil protection to not be excluded from being a USCF member, because the uscf believes you cheated and thus excludes you. You would have no grounds or bases for a legal arguement except as to where you could show a violation of your civil liberties, which there would doubtful be any room to make a case here.

30

The lawyers on the Bylaws Committee and those the USCF has consulted with disagree with you.

Further, there is nothing to STOP someone from suing the USCF if his or her tournament or other membership privileges are suspended (it has happened before), and even getting a baseless suit thrown out of court can run up several thousand dollars in legal bills.

Also, the USCF has lost suits in the past because it failed to follow due process, that’s not a road we want to travel down again.

As to the money question, I think someone posted that the amount won was under $1000, which is the current minimum to trigger a class prize floor.

As I understand it, raising that amount to $1500 or $2000 is likely some time in 2006, because the threshhold hasn’t been changed since it was instituted over 10 years ago and there are a whole lot more events offering $1000 class prizes than there were back then.

John Hillery is correct in pointing out that while we could probably stand to have more automated checks for suspicious-looking results, each situation will have to be reviewed manually. If membership suspensions are to be involved then each case will likely have to go first to the Ethics Committee and then to the Executive Board. A suspended member has the option to appeal his suspension to the Board of Delegates which meets once a year.

I will be submitting a report to the Board about this issue (both in general and with some specific examples, such as this one), as we need some clear guidelines about what types of actions the office can take without involving the Ethics Committee or the Board and what specific steps to follow.

This is likely to become a topic of discussion for four USCF committees: Ethics, Rules, TDCC and Ratings. (Bylaws may get involved, too.)

31

Actually, how about this? Rather than trying to floor players, what if Goichberg and the CCA as well as other major tournament organizers with large prize funds decide to use a player’s peak rating during the past year? (rather than the rating from the previous supplement.)

This would in effect pretty much nullify the point of sandbagging. Like say someone wins the U1800 section of the North American Open (December) and his post rating is something like 1824. Then say he wants to play in the Foxwoods Open (April). Even if he sandbags himself to <1800 again it wouldn’t matter since his peak rating of 1824 after the NA Open would be used. Thus, he would be forced to play in the U2000 class for at least another year. Meaning that he won’t be able to playin the U1800 for the World Open (July) either.

I know it’s not the perfect solution, but it should discourage and reduce the effects of sandbagging to an extent. Face it people. Cheating is everywhere. We can’t eliminate it, but we can try to minimize it.

32

Sandbagging is going to happen … it is a gamble. The best answer to take care of sandbagging, has been the USCF rating floor. True, the most anyone can give up is 299 points … but it is not that simple to lose so many rating points.

With such high prize money at these huge money tournaments … new players can be non-active to keep their rating low. Players that study … do not have to be active just to keep their rating low. You can have players that look weak with a low rating, but they are under rated in the first place.

The point is this, with a huge money tournament, it will bring out a lot of players. The more players you have, the difference of the rating of 300 points becomes less important. If you are under rated by 200 points, it can shift the win in a class with a small tournament (under 50). With a larger tournament, with more rounds … the under rated 200 points becomes null and void with more players.

If you want to hurt sandbaggers … have more rounds. If you want to hurt sandbaggers, have more players within the same rating level as the sandbagger.

33

I think that’s the best idea so far. Maybe the go-back should be 2 years rather than 1.

In any case, a way would have to be found to make it easy for organizers to grab onto this information. For example, the supplement (and MSA) could list each player’s peak rating during the go-back period, along with his current rating.

Bill Smythe

34

I was not initially in favor of posting floors on the website because we don’t put them in the rating supplement, so we create two class of TDs, those who have access to online data onsite and those who do not.

I think peak ratings suffer from the same problem.

Adding that information to the supplement would increase the size of each printed supplement, at a time when the USCF is trying to find ways to make the supplement smaller because it is getting rather expensive to print and mail.

Adding that information to the supplement files would definitely cause WinTD to reject that file and might cause problems with Swis-Sys. (Neither program currently has the ability to utilize either rating floor or peak rating information, anyway.)

Also, with rerating someone’s peak rating could change.

Didn’t the HB tournament try to use ‘peak published rating’? (I’m not sure how successful they were at that, though, because that’s not an easy thing to look up, at least not without using something like the rating supplement history tab on MSA.)

Mike Nolan

35

Yes, we went back a few Supplements for the HB. Actually, I think that is the best idea – Good thinking Weightlifter. A year sounds good. It will not totally get rid of sandbaggers, but it certainly helps. Definitely for major tournaments where most of the entries are submitted in advance and where the big money is. I think organizers and directors are in a better position than the USCF to police this up.

36

Having more rounds does not significantly impact sandbaggers any more than having more chickens discourages a fox.

37

Mike Nolan has posted some reasons why publishing peak ratings may be impractical at the moment, but none (or few) why it would be inherently a bad idea. Maybe it’s a good thing to keep in mind for eventual implementation.

As for the printed rating supplement, would the addition of a single letter (the peak class, M,X,A,B,C etc, that a player has achieved during the past year) add to the number of lines required for a player’s listing?

Bill Smythe

38

Well, it would add a character and (probably) a space or two to each column in the rating supplement, and it is already a bit tight on space. I don’t think we can reduce the type size any further without running into problems.

39

I will confess I haven’t seen a printed rating supplement in a few months, but I assume provisional ratings are still published with a slash and the number of games, like “1350/12”, right? So, for established players, the space used for the “/12” could be used instead for the peak rating class, thus adding NO additional space (unless I’m missing something).

Bill Smythe

40

I think we are spending way too much time on what is (at worst) an unusual problem. I also think it’s crossing the line to talk about a player behind his back (unless he just happens to be one of readers of this forum) and not give him a chance to respond.

For all we know there may be a reasonable explanation. For example, he could have been very ill, but tried to continue to play (figuring that he was already there, and had already paid his entry fee, …).

I have never lost a game to a player that I believed to have sandbagged. I have played some lower rated players that I believed to be very under-rated. But, since they were giving me very tough games in tournaments with insignificant prizes, I felt they were actually trying to raise their rating. Sure, I know it happens – it’s just very rare.

I know that if you look at player’s performances versus prize funds, that you’ll see some questionable results. However, I’d like to point out that there are other explanations: 1. Players are more likely to try out new openings, untested ideas, etc. in tournaments without significant prizes, 2. Some players play much better at long time controls (me, for example) and there aren’t many such tournaments except those with large prizes, 3. without a large prize at stake, its easier to let other considerations affect your play (things like how long a drive home you have, for example).

The players that sandbag need to understand that they aren’t beating the system. They are sad cheaters that are beneath our notice. Not something that we should spend a great deal of effort on. They aren’t “CRIMINAL”, they are “PATHETIC”. A person won’t make much money this way – consider the costs of travelling and entering two tournaments (the one to sandbag, the other to try to win a prize) and even a “successful” sandbagger will be losing money! If the player in question really was sandbagging, he didn’t win nearly enough money to cover his expenses (around $700 payoff at the NAO). Why would anyone compomise their principles (and suffer the humiliation of loosing while sandbagging, and only get to play against lower skilled players when not) only to LOSE money?

The right way to have handled this problem was to have contacted the directors at the North American Open before play began. They could have decided to only let him play in a higher section. My understanding is that the CCA has a set of minimum ratings for players that have had outstanding tournament performances – all they have to do is add him to the list. Also, this way the player could have had a chance to respond and defend himself.