Some questions are best left unanswered…
Last year I noticed it was near impossible to get sandbaggers banned although it is against the rules. A sandbagger is losing games on purpose to lower his rating. With low rating you get paired with lower rated players in regular games. It is also important in Arenas with pairing based on rating and rating restricted Swiss tournaments.
I asked support last year how sandbaggers were handled. The response I got was they are banned when detected without warning. I also got there might be a warning before the ban and that they may get unbanned after a promise to quit sandbagging.
I also asked if there was a sandbagging pool, where sandbaggers are paired with other sandbaggers, but it was strongly denied.
It now turns out there is a sandbagger pool as the above posted link. chess.com’s main strategy seems to be to place sandbaggers in the pool and no longer give warnings & bans.
It would be an ok solution, if it wasn’t for the tournaments. To me it is clear that flagged sandbaggers are allowed to enter tournaments.
Last year I was told there were checks before you enter a tournament. If you are too far from a recent rating top you were denied to enter. I then found an example of a sandbagger who dropped 900 ratings (very short games / losses) within hours and a day later entered an arena with pairings based on rating. A bug report was filed in July 2024, and upon request from the development team I provided more examples. I tried to get feedback and updates on the bug in August & September, but there were no news on the bug. It wasn’t fix as I found more examples.
I reached out again 3 weeks ago to get an update. Nothing has happened since July and I was once again requested to provide more examples. (And the bug might be connected to the Stats bug, whatever that is). Sandbaggers with 1500 rating drops with very short losses are still allowed to enter.
My conclusion is that cc if cc really wanted to stop sandbaggers in tournaments, they would have fixed the bug in 9 months.
My feedback on sandbaggers:
- Start to ban sandbaggers again. From a player’s perspective, you think you look at the opponents rating and is expecting the opponent to play according to the rating, not 1500 rating higher. What is the difference to be paired with an engine cheater or a 1500 rated higher rated. They both will feel invincible and you will lose to both of them.
- If you decide to keep the pool, at least stop them from entering tournaments.
https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8639319-how-does-matchmaking-work-in-live-chess
Updated today, stallers, sandbaggers etc are placed in their own matching pool according to cc.
How does the pool work in Swiss and Arenas? Are flagged sandbaggers allowed to enter tournaments?
Does cc have checks prior to entering tournaments? Checks for sandbaggers?