So, what is the idea of sand bagging in terms of OGS? Recently, I had a game against a provisional ranked player who was clobbering me. Then they resigned at the end of the game without communicating. Could easily be something personal and they simply had to quit the game. But, I’d seen a prohibition against sand bagging on the OGS terms, and I wondered why anyone would want to do that. Tournament rankings?
You can’t conclude anything from a small number of games. And by definition a player with a provisional ranking has played at most a handful of games. He may have resigned for a number of personal reasons (phone call…) or simply out of boredom.
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Many players with provisional ranks are strong because they have played on other servers, but are new to OGS.
People who sandbag in go and similar games, meaning deliberately fooling others into thinking they are weak, are sadists. They get their jollies from clobbering others because their weak character finds no satisfaction in normal accomplishments.
This does not refer to sandbagging in poker or other strategic situations, such as diplomacy and war, where sandbagging is a recognized and respectable tactic.
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Like AI cheating, it is an unfortunate part of playing online. It can never be prevented and any attempts to do so almost always hurts the ordinary player. Be annoyed that you were tricked and block him/her, or try to learn from playing a stronger player. I would consider only playing people you know if it affects your mood/spirit too much.
As for why people do it, I get it but cannot relate. If you love winning, but are lazy, destroying weaker players seems to give some illusionary sense of accomplishment.
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Sometimes I wonder if these people are streamers. Dywrin recently played one of my opponents. I know he backs off a little, but he still has the knowledge and sensibility of a 7 dan. And if he makes a mistake, he starts playing like a 7 dan because people don’t like his videos if he loses.
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The number of ordinary sandbaggers is vastly, vastly greater than the number of streamers.
Dwyrin has in the past posted games he lost, typically because they illustrated some valuable point. If he loses a game, he can and has posted some other game. In his most recent Basics game, he accidentally placed a stone on the wrong intersection. As he does in such situations, he shrugged it off and shifted his line of attack. The consequence was that his reduction of his opponent was less than it might have been. In other words, in the Basics games, there is no such need to shift into a “full-court press.”
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Well, I was more amused and confused than annoyed, as I got the unearned win. I figure the anomalies work themselves out in the longer term stats. I’ve had several odd finishes recently, so I’m pretty certain my current kyu ranking is skewed on the inflated side.
This was the person’s first game under that alias on OGS, so it was a reasonable match up. It probably wasn’t sandbagging, but I’ll never know the answer to this small mystery, I suspect.
Thank you everyone for the insightful and amusing replies
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Yeah, sandbagging is NOT allowed on ogs, but because the rating system is fully automatic (everyone starts at the middle of the rating scale and then rating system does its magics based on their ranked games), new users who havent yet played many games have often incorrect ranks.
But if you see a player who has lot of so-called “intentional resignations” please report them and those games, so the moderators can annul the games and hopefully get that players rank to where it should belong.
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Friendly suggestion here: Resign sooner than they do if you think they earned it.
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Good answer if you can count a close 19x19 game perfectly. Useless advice otherwise.
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In the game that prompted my OP, one did not need to count. My opponent had won by a lot of points, an obvious win. As for DobleU’s suggestion, I was playing this one out mostly because I’m trying to learn from stronger players wherever I encounter them. The last thing I was expecting, or will expect, is a resignation from someone who has clearly won. That said, my opponent really could have just had something they had to take care of, and didn’t care a bit about the winning or losing. It’s currently the only game they’ve played on OGS with this alias. I’m checking on them every now and again, as I’m curious how strong a player it truly was.
The part I don’t get about sandbagging is the anomaly that one seems to get off on the winning, but one is throwing (losing) games to get the lower rank to work from. It’s not logical. 
These organic life forms are so confusing.
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It’s hard to guess his level since he took a huge lead from the very beginning after you misread the ladder. so he didn’t need to play sharp moves. I’d say he is not dan level, and better than 5k.
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It seems like this user was not a sandbagger. Apparently, they tried OGS for the first time, and realized we don’t know when to resign 
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It’s not logical if you assume the goal is to formally win the game. More likely, the goal is simply to dominate the other player by completely outclassing them. Formal result on the server doesn’t matter much.
Sandbagging is not logical.
Letting yourself be dominated and defeated so that you can dominate another player and outclass them, is certainly not logical.
If you need sandbagging to feel good, something in your personality is twisted.
Always feel a bit sorry for sandbaggers.
So when I encounter a sandbagger, I give them the double R treatment: resign and report.
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I’m afraid its not really possible to detect sandbagger by game alone, unless its DDK with dan skills.
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Rank manipulators who resign or escape from many won games can be detected by anyone who wants to make the tedious effort of examining the sandbagger’s history.
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