At the risk of reopening old wounds, this makes me realise that AI cheater victims are inadvertent sandbaggers.
Since sandbagging causes other people’s ranks to be a bit higher than they otherwise might be and AI cheating makes them a bit lower this makes me wonder:
What are all the other sources of rank disparity?
Do they push ranks up or down?
What is the overall effect?
What is the effect of imperfectly attempting to address the rank effects?
A few other ways rank can be affected came up in the discussion about sandbagging e.g. misclicks
What is the overall effect of leaving AI cheating games and sandbagged games unannulled? Some victims got a boost in rank, some got a reduction…
philosophical thought
I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of inadvertent sandbagging. It seems to me that the sandbagging only starts at the point where the sandbagger is at a rank (artificially lowered) to start beating victims. It doesn’t seem like the phase of lowering rank on the first place is really sandbagging. At that point the sandbagger is actually trying to lose. When sandbagging proper they are trying to win (but may also resign from an obviously winning position once satisfied with their “win”).
So, if you have no intention of engaging in the actual sandbagging part of the process, are you really sandbagging if your rank is pushed down “artificially” somehow but without that being your intention. I’m thinking about AI cheater victims here, but also misclicks where opponent refuses undo or maybe rage quitting while in fact ahead or some urgent thing that interrupts your game. There are probably other circumstances.
If you are never going to “actually sandbag” shouldn’t the system just be allowed to work to correct these inaccuracies by itself?
Or in other words does inadvertent sandbagging even exist?