Sandbagging. Can a player do anything?

[detectorist]

@tanstaafl

I vaguely remember the time before the tournaments with big class prizes. The USCF was much smaller then (I’m NOT saying that’s cause and effect). So what if the 1800 people that play in the World Open (if there are that many) play in slightly fewer other tournaments. That’s not a very large portion of the USCF and I don’t see it having that big an impact. I think the large tournaments encourage some people to play (warm-up tournaments to get ready, for example).

Gee if there were REALLY a lot of sandbagging going on, wouldn’t players play one or two tournaments to sandbag before the big tournaments?

Makes sense to me. I’ll go further and state that large tournaments attract new players by virtue of the publicity generated as opposed to the smallish local competitions which aren’t even on the local media radar screen.

[rfeditor]

@tanstaafl

I vaguely remember the time before the tournaments with big class prizes. The USCF was much smaller then (I’m NOT saying that’s cause and effect). So what if the 1800 people that play in the World Open (if there are that many) play in slightly fewer other tournaments. That’s not a very large portion of the USCF and I don’t see it having that big an impact. I think the large tournaments encourage some people to play (warm-up tournaments to get ready, for example).

Gee if there were REALLY a lot of sandbagging going on, wouldn’t players play one or two tournaments to sandbag before the big tournaments?

At one time, I analyzed this by graphing attendance at traditional tournaments (held at the same time in roughly the same format) over a period of 15 years. The presence of a “big” tournament, like a U.S. Open or Software Toolworks, depressed attendance at all other tournaments for six to nine months. I have long since given up trying to convince people with mere facts, however.

[nolan]

Since this topic has morphed, I have spun off the last few posts to a new topic.