Some time ago I made a detailed post covering sandbagging (rating manipulation) in rating-restricted tournaments. To my great disappointment, it got immediately deleted by mods. I've posted links to relevant tournaments as evidence, not to publicly accuse anyone. Moderators, care to explain your actions?
Since the situation has not changed since last time, I'll reiterate my main points:
1. Sandbagging is so abundant that it is simply impossible to find a fair U1500 or U1700 blitz or bullet arena tournament. The winner is always a player with actual rating ~300 points higher than the tournament ceiling.
2. Manual reporting does not work - 50% of the time the reports are ignored, in other 50% the offender simply creates a new account and play the next day as if nothing happened.
3. The sandbaggers are extremely blatant and easy to spot: ~1800 performance in tournaments, ~800 performance in non-tournament games. Such behaviour should be detected and banned automatically!
4. Even better solution is a two-factor authentication system, requiring an SMS activation to participate in the tournaments. That would also largely solve the cheating problem.
With #4 I do see some problems. What if you don't have a phone?
@learningchesskid3 Either buy the cheapest one for the sole purpose of playing in tournaments or take pride in the fact that your sacrifice makes Lichess a better place for everyone else. Consider two alternatives: either <1% of players have to invest $10 to be able to play in tournaments or 100% of players have to suffer from cheaters and sandbaggers. I think the first option is far more reasonable.
@inversed Another idea would be to give each player a "tournament rating" and base that only on the tournament performance.
@inversed #4 is silly. What makes you think people with phones can't cheat? If you're thinking of blacklisting people by number, what's to stop them using another number? They'd just have to borrow a phone from a friend or family member. It adds a restriction (people like me who travel with a phone without a foreign sim card). It requires Lichess come up with some sort of SMS gateway which might be tedious/non-free.
Guys,
what is considered sandbagging?!
I have seen that "All-The-Time-Champion", who had pleasure to crush everyone in U1500 1+0 tourneys and was bragging in general chat about it. That is sick!
Also, have seein users resigning games under 5 moves. Reported them. They are gone. Those are clear cases of rating abuse.
But, lichess offers pretty much legal options of sandbagging/inflating the rating (not on purpose)!
"Sandbagging":
1) Berserking in arena-tournaments
2) Giving moretime in rated games
3) Accepting takeback requests from opponents in rated games
4) Option of playing rated games for +0
"Inflating":
1) rated thematic tournaments in the arena - just pick an opening you know and play that. :)
2) offering takebacks in rated games
2) eeking (+1 point each game, selecting weaker opposition - but one must be an expert on that)
All that, legal and fine - the options above are not considered rating manipulation.
So why should we care about virtual points? It is just a number; goes up/goes down...
It is a great place to play! Peace!
The root cause of the sandbagging are the Uxxxx tournaments. Why cannot the Uxxxx players participate in the regular tournaments?
@Doofenshmirtz SMS authentication greatly increases the amount of work that the cheater / sandbagger must do. Right now in case of a ban the offender simply creates a new account and does his business as usual. It takes less than a minute and zero effort. With authentication he'd have to find a new valid number, which takes considerably more effort than clicking "create new account" button. Maybe first time he'll borrow mom's phone, but then it would be more problematic. He'd have to invest at least a few $$ and half an hour to purchase a new sim card. That barrier alone would be sufficient do deter 99% of sandbaggers. The system has been proven efficient in practice. Don't take my word for it - Call of Duty already uses such a system and the cheaters are crying.
@Funkmaus Things like berserk affecting the rating is a different subject entirely. I think we can agree that people who have deflated rating because of berserking and 1900 players pretending to be <1500 are very different cases. I've also seen "every-time-champion" guy and reported him. My guess is that he is still in business under a different name. But some other sandbaggers I've reported were not even banned. Why should we care? Because these people ruin the spirit of sportsmanship and make lichess a worse place for beginners.
@tpr Because they would score 1/10 and the tournament would be a terrible experience.
#8
After a few losses they meet each other. Losses are an opportunity to learn.
@tpr A low-rated player can just as likely meet a 2200+ rated player who joined late. You can't learn a lot from losses when the rating disparity is enormous. The whole point of rating-restricted tournaments is to create a level playing field.
