I like the way the CCA handles the minimum ratings:
minimum ratings are awarded to players to reward them for outstanding results in significant tournaments,
players are not penalized for sandbagging by being denied entry in lower ratings sections.
Surely nobody can object to such a reward? 
Thanks for the positive replies to my idea Bill Smythe and fanclg. It just seemed like the most logical way to handle this âproblemâ without having to pick out individuals who sandbag because that would be impossible.
Nolan, I know that there is not much space on the supplement, but maybe the one letter system that Bill suggested might work. I havenât taken a look at a printed supplement recently, but like he said, maybe the space used to indicate a provisional rating (P?) could be replaced with an M or B or such. Iâm also guessing that the CCA (since they run most of the big money tournaments) has internet access to the MSA, which they can probably use to get this info anyways.
Actually, this cheating is serious and it must end. With growing prize funds, payouts are getting bigger and bigger all the time. Take for example the $20,000 class level prizes given out at the HB Global. I would think a huge prize like that is enough to motivate any cheater. Same goes for the upcoming World Open, which can (with 1800 entries) potentially pay out $25,000 class prizes! Even the minimum guaranteed is $15,000. That kind of money will definitely cover any traveling expenses and hotel fees.
I hope youâre not suggesting that we let this kind of cheating go. Itâs literally stealing. If you were playing in a class A section, but in fact had to face a strong expert would that be fair? I definitely wouldnât think so.
Iâm not dismissing your concerns, but youâre really taking too short-term a view. You will note that the HB tournament is not being repeated, and Iâd be willing to give long odds that the World Open will not get 1800 players. The giant reptiles are approaching their sustenance limit. There is certainly a problem (though I would define the it as bloated class prizes per se), but if it were really getting worse, there would be more of these tournaments showing up every year. Especially if you adjust for inflation, the situation was much worse around 1980, with some New York organizers offering enormous prizes for class players only.
The HB Global may return in 2007, but if so it will probably be in a different city and on a different date.
Hoping to draw 2000 players in Minnesota in mid-May was not the soundest of business plans. I doubt that the player base in the US can support more than one big-money event in any 3-4 week period, and the calendar is quite full, so unless HB wants to go head-to-head with any of a half-dozen or so CCA events or other organizers with long-standing events (the National Open probably being the biggest of them), finding a better date will be difficult.
Iâm sorry weightlifter9000, but I donât think the sandbagging is a serious problem. I think itâs a symptom of bloated, unrealistic class prizes.
The problem is that NO class player deserves a $12,000 (NAO) to $25,000 (World Open) prize for their chess playing ability! And there is, in my opinion, no FAIR way to award such a prize. By fair, I mean that there is a reasonable likelihood of awarding the prize to the best chess player. The problem is that in the BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS â everyone is accurately rated, no sandbagging, no young players going up in ability too fast for the rating system to keep up with, no collusion, etc. â players within a single class are too close in ability (and too prone to blunders) for it to be likely that the best player will win the first prize. That means that large class prizes are simply a crap-shoot. As for as the REAL WORLD â the situation is worse.
BTW: If the player in question here really was sandbagging, then even being 200-300 points stronger than the class wasnât enough of an edge to guanantee him a reasonable payoff. Cheaters will soon come to realize that thereâs no point in what theyâre doing â they wonât be making money at it, they wonât be enjoying the game anymore â maybe theyâll just give up on chess and save us all from discussions like this.
Iâm afraid that the âcureâ to make it impossible for people to sandbag is going to be much worse than the âdiseaseâ. Youâd have to take draconian measures that would end up âcatchingâ perfectly innocent people. Youâd increase the work-load at the USCF and at the tournament organizers. There ainât no such thing as a free lunch. Making it impossible to sandbag is a âlunchâ Iâm not willing to pay for.
Right now I think we have enough measures to reasonably control the problem. Any organizer can assign a minimum rating (for their own events) to any player. If you think a player has been sandbagging, you can suggest such a course of action to the organizer. I urge you to go ahead and do so. Itâs better to make use of the current safeguards.
At the NAO, I was defeated by a player whose rating went up more than 100 points. I donât believe he had been sandbagging. I think heâs a young player who is going up in ability more quickly than the rating system can keep up with. BUT I still lost a game to a player that was too strong to be playing in that class. The loss still cost me a chance at more than $1000 more prize money. Iâm not complaining about the âunfairnessâ because I never believed that I deserved such an extravagent prize as whatâs being offered now. I play chess because I enjoy it â not for a chance at $25,000.
I guess there is one good point about large class prizes. When I do well at a large tournament, then I can be sure itâs because of my ability. Nobody will be slacking off with a large amount of money at stake. So I can be sure of several hard-fought games of chess.
Considering that youâre paying somewhere around $34 PER GAME, plus (in most cases) travel, lodging and meals, to play in the NAO, I find your statement that youâre doing it merely for enjoyment a bit hard to swallow.
I also think that threads like this show that sandbagging IS a problem and that our checks for it need improvement.
How serious it is may be mostly a matter of opinion. Are there thousands of sandbaggers out there? Probably not. Are there several hundred? Quite possibly.
tanstaafl makes a good point about âcatchingâ innocent people. If a player has an excellent result in a club event that pushes them up to 1401 but theyâre consistently a 1350 player, is it fair to them to be locked in as a class C player when they clearly are a class D player? Such a cut-and-dry rule may negatively impact more legitimate players than sandbaggers. Potential abusers should be censored, but I think it almost has to be done on a case-by-case basis.
I agree that the final actions (if any) need to be manual.
Any âmechanicalâ rule is going to fail because:
A. It will catch players with legitimate ratings variances.
B. It will fail to catch sandbaggers who figure out how to avoid the rule.
Ok, but thatâs not my point. If he was just a young player who is rapidly improving, thats not cheating is it? This thread is about how to prevent cheating; this has nothing to do with players who study the game and legitimately improve their chess skills. No, we are talking about strong players who purposely lose games in low-cost, local tournaments (such as a local weekend quad or swiss that might cost you $15-$25 to play in) in order to lower their rating and play in a weaker section and win thousands in the âbig-moneyâ tournaments.
Now that is the worst arguement I have ever heard. Are you suggesting that because in your opinion class prizes shouldnât be so big, that we just ignore cheating anyways? Iâm sorry to break the bad news to you, but big class prizes are here to stay. The CCA is a gasp business! Yes, they are there to support chess, but also to make money!
Now suppose you had it your way, and you ran a tournament where the class prizes were all eradicated. You would have one huge open section where only the best of the best wins. Now where would all the class players be? Not at your tournament! That means less entries and less money. Maybe if you are a rich philanthropist, thatâs okay for you. But if you are running a business, things just donât work that way.
To summarize this thread:
Members of the USCF are complaining about people who are sandbagging (which is a form of cheating).
Mike Nolan, an employee of the USCF, acknowledges the problem, and he wants suggestions from members about how we should deal with this problem.
People offer and discuss various suggestions, which may or may not work. Mike Nolan considers these suggestions.
One forum poster, tanstaafl, starts arguing about how stupid large class prizes are, and that sandbagging is not a problem.
Now, which of these four events donât belong? I think a third grader should be able to figure this one out.
Bottom line is, just stick to the point. If you really donât have anything to contribute, then donât say anything.
Gee Nolan, I didnât expect a personal attack.
The fact is that even if my ability was back at my peak rating level (which itâs not) I wouldnât have a realistic expectation of winning enough to pay my expenses at the NAO. It was a family vacation for me, so figure 3 round trip plane tickets, lodging, meals, etc. and the $240+ EF is insignificant. I can also tell you that compared to what I used to charge for my time as a computer consultant, $34 for a 4 to 6 hour game is nothing â my time is a much bigger investment than the EF and travel expenses combined.
The fact is that there are NO tournaments within a 2 hour drive from where I live. Also, there are very few tournaments anywhere at the serious time controls that I most enjoy. Since I have to travel out of town to play at all, why not go to a ârealâ tournament where I can expect a good level of competition?
Why shouldnât I drop $2K on a vacation to Vegas? I donât take vacations that often, and this was an enjoyable vacation. The money I won was insignificant. If I had made my pre-tournament goal (which I knew was an unrealistic goal) and scored 6 out of 7, I would STILL have lost money on the trip!
Any class player that travels to such a tournament with an EXPECTATION of winning more than enough to cover expenses is unrealistic. Does the possibility of a large payoff add excitement? Yes! Is this a good thing? Iâm not sure.
But seriously Nolan, what would you do to fix the problem? Iâm not in favor of any steps that would add a significant amount of overhead to chess tournaments or to the USCF staff. I still think that things like the CCA minimum rating list (which we already have) would take care of the majority of the problem if it was used. If anyone feels strongly enough about it, why not take the time to put together a list of players that they feel have sandbagged and submit it to the CCA? Nolan, with your access to the rating system this should be easy enough for you to do.
Really, a minimum rating list for prize purposes is all thatâs needed to solve the problem and since a separate organization (not the USCF) already has such a list why complicate things? Iâm in favor of solving problems like this at the lowest level possible. Peer presure would be the best solution, but when thatâs not enough let the tournament organizers maintain a list. Call me a reactionary, but Iâm not sure Iâm even in favor of a ratings floor! I recently started playing again after a significant time off, and if I hadnât worked REALLY hard Iâm sure I would have hit my floor. Would I be accused of sandbagging?
Well, Iâm not really sure what to say about part B, but part A is definitely something to be considered. âPunishingâ legitimate but sharp rating increases (like an extraordinarily good tournament result) is definitely a possible side-effect of using peak ratings, but then again so are prize winning rating floors. Maybe a case-by-case is the only solution.
weightlifter9000, I see you conveniently ignored my main point! That was that there are already mechanisms in place to curb sandbagging. If youâre not making full use of the features already in place, why whine for more?
Yes, purposely losing to lower your rating is CHEATING! But what kind of chess POLICE STATE would you have to have to eliminate the possibility of such cheating! I still say that most âcuresâ are worse than the problem youâre trying to fix. Itâs not as if a person can make a career out of such cheating. At WORST such a sad pathetic loser that keeps trying to sandbag and unfairly win class prizes will only get ONE such victory per class. This is better than the situation when I first started playing chess and there were NO anti-sandbagging controls. Then players felt they were on an honor system (and Iâm sure there were a few with no honor, but very few).
I remember as a young player when I first heard sandbagging being discussed. The utter contempt and derision such players received was more than enough to convince me!
I challenge anyone to point out sandbaggers that have won more than enough money to cover their expenses. If there are more than a handfull of such in the whole country, Iâll be very surprised. How much additional effort is it worth? The example that started this thread (if we assume his guilt) is the most extreme case Iâve heard about and he STILL didnât win enough to cover expenses!
I need to correct the record on one point here. I am NOT a USCF employee, though I am a consultant to the USCF on computer issues.
Actually, as I recall the player in Utah that I referred to won something like $5000 at the HB tournament. Whether that covered his expenses for several tournaments is a good point. I think there was a HS player who won $10,000 at this yearâs World Open. Whether he was sandbagging is hard to say. I think it was more likely the case that he was being selective about what events he played in to keep his rating from moving up too high.
The USCF receives complaints about sandbaggers all the time, though not every case is legitimate. (One interesting complaint received recently involved a player who has improved significantly by playing in non-rated events in New York.)
BTW, I wasnât making a personal attack, I was just pointing out that playing in events like the NAO is not inexpensive, and I think that nearly everyone playing in them has some thoughts about the prize fund.
Iâve taken my share of âchess vacationsâ, having been to every US Open since 1986, though I havenât played in any of them since 1998. (I won a resounding $18 in Boston in 1988, my son did much better, he won $100.)
My wife comes along when the venue is âinterestingâ; she may come to Chicago this summer (since we lived in Chicago for 10 years) but thereâs no way I could get her to go somewhere like Cherry Hill NJ in 2007.
Why do you keep saying this? Itâs the third time you mentioned the whole thing about expenses. Yes! I can do math!
But what you have said makes no sense at all! Are you saying that if a bank robber spends $50,000 to buy equipment for a robbery that he believes will net him millions, but somehow screws it up and only gets away with five hundred bucks that itâs okay? Oh yea, of course he lost $49,500 in the process, but the real point is, he still stole $500.
Now I donât know how much his guy at the NAO won (some said itâs $700 i think?), but he still ended up with money that he shouldnât have even been eligible for in the first place. Thatâs why sandbaggers have to be stopped. Not because they donât profit in the long run, not because there are only a few of them, but because they are taking money which isnât theirs.
Oh and FYI, if this guy did win $700, then he actually did profit. Why? Because he won more money than he paid for his entry fee. Nope, food doesnât count. He ate the food he paid for, so paying for food isnât losing money. Hotel fees? Nope, that doesnât count either, because he used the hotel room (bed, bathroom, TV, water, electricity, etc) that he paid for. Neither does transportation count because the fares for his trip (by plane, bus, train, taxi, etc) is what he would have to pay regardless of why he went to Las Vegas.
So if you do the real math:
[winnings]-[entry fee]=[profit]
weightlifter9000, ideally no one should profit from sandbagging. We are in agreement there.
My point is that the effort we put into combating this problem must take into account certain facts:
We run a real risk of damaging the enjoyment of chess MORE by our efforts than the sandbagging itself would have done. How much must the non-cheating players suffer to elimanate this problem?
It is virtually impossible to distinguish between legitimate rating variations and intentional sandbagging. Only in really extreme cases could we make an air-tight case. (only penalize the stupid sandbaggers?)
The USCF has finite resources. We shouldnât take more time and effort to solve a problem until we are convinced that the problem is significant. Iâve seen, in this thread, mention of two or three âsandbaggingâ chess players. If there arenât more than two or three, how much of a problem is it? Nolan, youâve said the USCF has received numerous complaints â how many of those have been investigated and found to be legitimate?
There are several steps that can be taken today to curb the problem without requiring any more rules, red-tape, effort, or oversight.
I think the best way to handle the problem is positive peer pressure. Let the player know that such behavior is unacceptable. If somebody starts losing his friends, being shunned at chess clubs, etc., and hasnât made any money from his efforts, will he continue?
I guess I have to agree with you, that the amount of money won isnât the main issue. There are probably people that would sandbag to win a $50 prize, and they are just as wrong. But our efforts to combat the problem should be proportional to the size of the problem and one or two instances of sandbagging (only one of which garnered a significant amount of money) may not be enough to justify major efforts to combat the problem.
This thread has had a lot of posts and gotten a lot of attention. Has anybody taken a concrete step against this player? Filed a complaint with the USCF that he cheated by throwing games? Asked the CCA to give him a minimum rating for future tournaments? Confronted him and asked for an explanation? Anything???
I just looked at the top finishers at the North American Open (those with a score of 6.0 or better). I saw a few rapidly improving players, but not one convincing case of sandbagging. If sandbagging is a big problem (not saying it isnât) then they must be a sadly unsuccessful group of cheaters! Not one of them made it to the big ($12,000 announced for first in most classes) money!
One player did seem (to me) to have a volatile rating, but I didnât see any pattern that related to size of the prize fund. Without that, I donât see how you could make a case against him. I donât have the time to look at all of the 5.5s to see if anyone came âcloseâ to a big prize, and I could have missed something. If the one guy weâve been talking about is the only example, though, then letâs just deal with him on an individual basis and get on with enjoying chess!
Ok, now weâre getting somewhere. Iâm glad that you understand my point about the irrelevance of the amount of money won. Like you have realized, sandbagging to win $50 is just as wrong and bad as sandbagging to win $20,000.
Most of the other stuff you said is at least partially correct, but I was just getting ticked off everytime you mentioned the fact that they donât win a lot of money. I guess that bank-robber analogy kind of puts things into perspective.
One thing though is that there are a lot more sandbaggers than you think. And some of them have been more successful than the guy who won $740 at the NAO.
Nolan recalls that he won $5,000.
Now this is A LOT of money. Thatâs about how much I get paid after working a year part time at the supermarket (Iâm still a student).
Apparently he got floored after he won that money, which in my opinion (and many others) isnât good enough. I never said it would be easy, but somehow this type of incident must be prevented from happening again. I thought my idea would work well, but then Smith pointed out that it can also hurt innocent players too. What Iâm saying is, then we have to think of a better way, not just put the issue aside and ignore it because itâs too difficult to deal with.
Often, people donât realize how bad cheating is until they become a victim. Itâs a long story that I donât even want to get into, but I was also a victim once. I reported the incident to the TD, but I had no proof, and my opponent just denied everything. The TD even told me that he was sorry for me, but without hard evidence there wasnât anything he or I could do.
I really feel for those people who had to lose to the âgrandbaggerâ. He basically stole $5,000 that should have belonged to someone else. We as members of the USCF have to see that such terrible acts are stopped.
Interesting topic! I would like to make the following suggestions/comments:
I like the idea of taking a playerâs highest rating over the past year, or two, etc. but that is something that a TD can choose to do if he/she likes without the need for it to go into the rule book (I guess so long as they advertise it).
On Page 262 of the Official Rules of Chess it states âThe rules governing USCF rating floors for large prize winners are as follows: Under-2200 or below, $1000.â - so please USCF enforce this rule for players who win at least $1000 in the U-1200 and U-1000 categories! There isnât anything that says this rule stops at U-1400!
An idea - when games are played between players rated at least 500 points apart (a nominal figure that could easily be changed), then rate the increases and decreases at ½k rather than full k. That way when players like this lose to players rated ridiculously below them, then the rating effect will be less, although admittedly it does harshly punish the person who won but then again they shouldnât gain too many points from a person deliberately losing to decrease his rating. Maybe something could be implemented where the higher rated player has to be at least rated 1600 as I know it is feasibly possible for a scholastic player rated 600 to beat a 1100 on quite a common basis.
Chris Bird
Unless this becomes a more constructive thread, I think itâs time to move on. Opinions have been stated and restated but not a lot of useful ideas are being offered. Itâs time to refer this to the appropriate USCF committes, maybe theyâll offer more ideas and fewer inflammatory opinions.
I believe the rulebook is out of date compared to what the Board has passed on this subject, Chris.