Sandbagging spike on lichess 🚀

@muldrothaEDH,

Well. I had also received thanks from LICHESS. But unfortunately there are many. Continue your search for these cheaters. Thank you

Sandbagging is totally pointless when there is no material gain to be had.Another now-extinct chess site was plagued by it because there was in fact a financial incentive to try it.
In the absence of the profit-motive it becomes just one more manifestation of the cheater inferiority complex.Too insecure to risk losing ,so fly a false flag and spoil it for the honest ones.

@campacavalloscacchi
yeah so did i but it doesn't rly matter the point is lichess responded and banned the sandbagger so just report them if you see them(that should rly sound better) and give a good reason including a link to at least 2 games against a really strong player and really weak

@IPunishDaddy2007 #30
Most of them are real I can verify this
At about a month ago most guys I knew that compete for top 10 in the ultrabullet arena freaked out due to this sandbagging shit and said they would be creating another account in which they would sandbag
Well!....... Right now 80% of them aren't active anymore and the number of lower rated players with high performance in that arena spiked
What do you think happened?
They definitely went into it
And it would continue this way if proper actions aren't taken

@muldrothaEDH,
look I'm old of the trade. I am a hunter of cheaters. It is certainly not the first that I point out. I try to keep Lichess clean as much as I can.

anyway I would just like to play chess, the cheating job should be done by the site administrators.

I love to see how this thread took a turnaround - from public accussations to sane discussion. :)
Dealing with sandbaggers in online chess is the hardest part.
You simply dont have the evidence unless people are making it extremely obvious. :<

I remember losing to an 1800-rated blitz player in our Q-League-Team tournament who zerked me in a 5+0 game.
Havent zerked them back because playing from touchpad or without gaming mouse often costs me 2 seconds to execute the move and also because I take this tournament seriously...
Well they outplayed me. Deep opening knowledge, avoided all tactical tricks which I have desperately tried to use, traded off into a slight better ending and converted the advantage with an ease there.
All this considering that they gave me time odds. :<
To be honest I peaked at their stats only to make sure they been not cheating and noticed the perfomance: above 2300 with a berserk rate over 50%. Oh well...
I refrained from reporting that person just because it felt wrong.
I had no proof. I couldnt know for sure. Maybe it was their great day?!

What can organizers of online tournaments with money prizes do? @prashnakrisad
Maybe look at how "Sundays with Unity" are dealing with it. They take OTB rating for prizes nevermind what is lichess blitz.
Sure you are going to say that most players are strangers and are not playing OTB.
But dont they have to give you their identity and their bank account when claiming the price?
I doubt that some 2000 rated player can "hide" in the 1400 rating category because noone goes from zero to hero in chess - it takes a lot of time to reach certain levels and someone is always around who knows your real skills...

What is lichess doing about the large amount of sandbaggers in tournaments these days or are they just going to ignore?
Especially the ultrabullet, hyperbullet, and bullet tournaments
I mean it's way too obvious for them not to notice
Or should I sandbag too?

It's actually quite hard to catch sandbaggers without people reporting. But at times, it is quite hard for people to conclude whether a sandbagger is an actual sandbagger.

@Funkmaus,
in my opinion, since you had doubts about the honesty of the other player, you had to report it to the administrators. They are the ones who then decide what to do. Of course, a single suspicious match is not enough.