Sandbagging is running rampant and goes unpunished / Reports are ineffectual

Yeah I concur. Surely something should be done. Either, 1) some sort of automation to detect blatant sandbagging, 2) increase the number of games needed to play in tournaments, 3) pay attention to reports, or some combination of the above. More moderators couldn't hurt.

It's definitely not ideal at the moment.

@Diwaditya can you not act like this, OP obviously knows hows to report but sometimes theory and reality are poles apart.

I also reported one a while ago, the guy was constantly resigning games to keep his bullet rating between 1500 and 1700 so he could keep playing U1700, but nothing ever happened. He's still doing this shit, his curve literally looks like an ECG

Dear @John-Wick!
First of all, you are strong enough to beat someone rated 2400 :-)
Well, in your extreme example, when a 2400 rated player is masquerading as a 1500 and you are losing rating points to them, then everyone else will also be losing points to them on their way back up to 2400.
The effect is temporary: more points you lose to sandbaggers, more points you gain in your next games as your own ratings are getting lowered by them.
Please remember: Rating abusers and cheaters can take your points but they cant take your skills - you lose nothing, really nothing by losing to them. Please dont let them manipulate your emotions.
Just btw. it also works the other way around: sandbaggers give away free points on their way down...

I think dealing with sandbaggers in online chess is the hardest part.
You simply dont have the evidence unless people are making it absolutely obvious. :<
Just keep reporting them and help the administration of this site to keep the enviroment clean!
Happy chessing and all best. :-)

@Funkmaus doesn't excuse the fact that Lichess staff seems to be slacking on dealing with sandbaggers. It's forbidden for obvious reasons. Saying "yeah your rating will recover anyway so don't get upset" is a quite stupid belittlement imo

This is just another example of someone putting close to 0 effort into his reports, and then complaining that we do not act on them.
Here's the latest report:

> Another sandbagger, although why even bother reporting? [link to a tournament]

When I read it, the first thing that comes to my mind is not: Wow, great report by a person knowing what they are talking about. When I read "why even bother reporting?" I think: "Yeah, why even bother looking at this report, mate." We are off to a really, really bad start.

And then, there is no evidence whatsoever offered why the tournament in question constitutes sandbagging. It's a hourly tournament, so not a big one. And the supposed sandbagger is on page two, so did not do exceedingly well. Also did not do exceedingly badly.

I look at the games, and they lose all their games versus 2100+, including OP. They have a win rate of 45%. They won a couple of games against 2000 players, but they also lost games against a 1800. Good tournament for someone rated 1600-ish, but not really out of the ordinary. People can have good tournaments, you know.

Next I look at the games themselves. I do not see any evidence in this tournament of losing games on purpose.

Next I look at the guys rating history. He's been fairly stable. Looks like most rating curves, with some ups and downs. He's worse at bullet than blitz, but there are simply players that are not good at all time controls.

So then I look at other tournaments. The reported player has good tournaments, and bad tournaments. Kind of like what you would expect of any players. I check a couple more random games. I check short losses. There's a couple that are due to bad connection. He falls for a lot of bullet tricks, which would explain the lower bullet rating as compared to the blitz rating. Nothing systematic.

In conclusion, no sandbagging.

What I suspect happened is the following: OP played the person in the tournament, and thought: "wow, this guy is stronger than his rating!" and reported him. When actually the opponent played a good game, as happens sometimes even for lower rated players.

If OP had looked more closely at this himself, he would probably have come to the same conclusion as me, and wouldn't even have reported. Instead he chose to create a bad report, and then go to the forums and complain.

Additionally: I did not bother to look closely into this report. The person in question may still be a (more subtle) sandbagger. But as a volunteer mod, I tend to put about as much effort into a report as the person who wrote it did. Which is close to 0 in this case. I actually think I put a lot more effort into it than John-Wick did. I probably shouldn't have, because now people will think complaining in the forums will make a mod look at their "sandbagging case".

What about the guy that I reported though? I found him bc he lost all games in the tournament I won, and then I found that he threw games deliberately in completely won positions, and that he's doing this again and again in order to not get above 1700 and play more U1700 tournaments. Couldn't get anymore obvious if you ask me.

You reported him for "Insults", which means the report goes to a communications mod. Usually it does not matter much, because they will forward it to someone else. But there is a chance they simply dismiss it, and that happened in this case. I sent a warning.

Anyway, I will close this thread now, because I do not want to take a second look into everyone's reports. We have a report queue for a reason, and it's so we do not reproduce the work of other mods.