Saturday, March 20, 2010

Post Script to Last Thursday.

I have a follow up to last week's story. In the 4th round my "buddy" from the third round continued his annoying behavior. He had gotten a bye in the last round and was paired up against a house player. He lost that game, but the opponent had forgotten to post the result. "Mr. Sore Loser" decided he would post the result as a win for himself.

The story gets more bizarre in this Thursday's tournament. This his his 4th week in a row playing in the "4 Rated Games Tonight!" tournament. In his first tournament he scored 3-1 with his wins coming against 3 A players and his loss to an 2100. He got a performance rating of 2100+. The following week he scores 1 - 2, beating a 1600 and losing to a 1700+ and a 1900+ player. His rating goes to 1951, which is what his rating on the April list will be.

Last Thursday it was unclear what his motives were since he was ticked off that I didn't resign in my "hopeless" position, and then followed it up by lying about the last round result. This week it was clear what his motives were. He went into sand bagger mode and went 0-4. He seems to want to get his rating down to under 1800 or maybe even under 1600 for the World Open. The way he dumped the games was really despicable. Most dumpers will play well up to a point, and then "blunder" later in order to lose. The opponent will at least have an interesting game until the blunder occurs. The unwary opponent may not even realize the game was being dumped. He might just think he got lucky. Who knows, maybe he dumped the game to me. If he did, he put on an impressive acting job at the end. Besides why would he dump against me, and then report that he won the last round when he lost?

He came a creative way to lose all his games. In round 1 he shows up over 20 minutes late, so he has very little time on his clock. In between rounds he leaves the club, and then shows up for round 2 over 20 minutes late. In rounds 3 and 4 he comes to the board on time, but keeps leaving to watch other games. He wasn't even in the room when he ran out of time in round 3. He probably lost on time in round 4 too.

I would have had to play him in round 3, but I had asked the TD to avoid the pairing if possible. Last week's encounter was very unpleasant. In between the first and second round he was staring at me as if he wanted to say something. I just ignored him and kept talking to a few of my friends. He was giving me the creeps. I didn't even want to sit next to him in round 3. I took advantage of the fact that my 3rd round opponent likes to move to unused table where it's less crowded. Normally it annoys me when he wants to play somewhere else. This time, I suggested we move to another board.

Going into the 4th round we both 0-3 so looked like the pairing would be unavoidable. If we ended out playing, I seriously gave consideration to resigning after 3 moves and asking the TD to set me a game with the house player. This way I wouldn't have to waste my sitting sitting around while he lost on time, and I could stick him with a win he didn't want. I hate sand bagging, so I have actually resorted to thwarting the dump by abruptly resigning a game when my opponent was up a clear rook and kept trying to give away his queen. I was 0-3 in that tournament and winning the game wasn't getting me any rating points. I was sitting on my floor so it didn't matter to me if I lost.

Fortunately I did not have to resort to such tactics. There was an odd number so I was due to get the bye. It's rare that I'm happy about getting a bye. However Joshua's dad was available to play as the house player. Since I was going home with them again, it gave us something to do while Joshua played his last round game. As it turned out, he would end out waiting for us. Guy and I had another one of crazy games where I get into all sorts of time trouble. Fortunately I managed to stifle the counter play he got for dropping a piece for a pawn, and I didn't have one of my clock induced meltdowns.

I have to laugh at stupidity of people who decide to sandbag at "4 Rated Games Tonight!" The organizer is one of the tournament directors at the World Open. Then there are people like me who can smell a sandbagger a mile away. All this will lead to the player getting assigned a CCA rating that will be higher then whatever section he's trying to get into. This joker should have a 2000 CCA rating.

7 comments:

Tommyg said...

I am such a chess tournament novice! Do people really do stuff like this? Sandbagging and dumping games? Seriously?

I don't get that kind of behavior.

Why does this guy want a lower rating for the World open?

CaseMoney said...

World Open is the big money tournament. If he's, let's say a 1900-strength player, he may try dumping rating points in order to play in the Under-1800 or the Under-1600 section of the World Open, where he'd have good chances to win a prize due to his higher actual strength.

tanch said...

Hello Polly,

Dumping rating points is not all uncommon. I've seen 1800++ players dumping points during their club championships in order to qualify for the U1600 rating for the Nationals like the Sydney Open/Australian Open/Doebrl Cup.

It's particularly disgusting behaviour. You can get away with it in 1 or 2 years but doing it for 3 years running and people will quickly wise up.

Needless to say, no one wants to play against these type of players.

Polly said...

Case: If a player is 1900 strength that's not good enough to win the under 1800 section. I figure someone has to be at least 300 points higher in strength then the class cut off. This guy might win the under 1800 section. He'd surely win the under 1600 section if he got his rating down that low. At the rate he's going on Thursdays he would drop below 1600, however I don't think he'll be allowed in that section.

Tanc: I guess sandbaggng is not unique to the USA. Some people don't seem to care if it's obvious what they're doing. I don't get much satisfaction winning games like that.

Steve Wollkind said...

What a jerk. Now that his tendencies are well established, why don't they just ban him from the club? Does that ever happen?

I'm pretty sure that at the MetroWest if we had someone like this he would be politely asked not to return....

Anonymous said...

Polly,
I have checked the crosstables for all these tournaments. While I think there is a good chance you may be right I also think there is a good chance he just had a lucky tournament the first time. My guess would be he is around 1700 strenth. His performance rating was quite high in the first tourney, but if you look at who he was playing, though I mean no insult to those players, I have played all of them and I know that while they sometimes play strong they are very streaky and can lose to 1700 strength players from time to time.
However, my guess would be this guy is probably sandbagging based on putting everything together, just though id throw that out there.

Polly said...

Anon: Maybe the first tournament was a fluke. It's hard to tell. One of the players he beat the first week, he lost to the second week. Perhaps my judgment is clouded by the fact that I lose almost all the time to two of the players he beat the first week.

Judging how he played against me later in the game, most which did not get recorded, I would guestimate around 1800. None of this is very scientific.