During the last one year, the sport of chess has been rocked by allegations of cheating by several players. The most publicised story was the one involving Hans Niemann. The situation was such that Magnus Carlsen made one move, resigned and highlighted the problem of playing an opponent with a history of cheating. But, recently, one more case of cheating and manipulation has emerged. This one involves a chess prodigy and the term sandbagging.
Li Haoyu, who is listed in the FIDE site as the 226th-ranked player in China alone, was handed a six-month ban by FIDE for sandbagging. What is this phenomenon?
Sandbagging - A new chess phenomenon?
Essentially, the term sandbagging means a player intentionally losing games or drawing against weaker opponents to lower their rating, often with the goal of entering tournaments at a lower rating bracket where they can easily win prizes or gain an unfair advantage. According to a chess.com article, Sandbagging falls under the broader category of rating manipulation, which includes activities such as arranging game results intentionally, playing with multiple accounts, choosing the wrong skill level on a new account and losing intentionally to lower one's rating.
Li Haoyu's situation falls in the 4th category, in which he was deemed to be intentionally losing to lower his rating so that he could gain an unfair advantage in some other competition.
How did Li Haoyu get caught?
Li Haoyu was rated 2372 in August 2023. By August 2024, he was at 1979. The biggest slip during this phase was the 138 rating points he let slip over the course of two international tournaments in China during August 2024. Many of the players who defeated him were rated much lower than him and that raised suspicions. The Chinese Chess Federation had initially announced the results to FIDE without mentioning the suspicions. What then triggered the whole thing?
In one of the events, according to the arbiter's report, he lost despite having plenty of time as compared to his opponents. This was a red flag, and that is when FIDE decided to act.
Now, in an email query, Li Haoyu did mention that he wanted to employ time pressure on his opponents. But, that statement goes contradictory to the nature of losses in which he was defeated despite having ample time. The FIDE ethics panel voted 2-1 to ban Li, with one of the panellists stating that since Li had not played competitive chess between 2012 and 2022, the 10-year absence could explain his poor form.
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Law under which he was banned
Li Haoyu was found guilty of breaching Article 11.7(e)(ii) of the FIDE Code of Ethics. This section prohibits conduct “likely to prejudice the integrity of a game of chess or the good reputation of the game.” But what could be done about it?
The practice of sandbagging is actually prevalent in the United States. In the US, open chess tournaments often feature large cash prizes for lower-rated sections, making sandbagging a recurring concern for organisers and the chess community. The sandbagging phenomenon also exploits a loophole in the ELO ratings, the benchmark for Chess players' ratings. ELO can struggle to accurately predict outcomes for players at the extreme ends of the rating scale, and they don't fully account for the inconsistencies and variations in individual player performance.
How to combat sandbagging?
There are certain algorithms and oversight mechanisms by major platforms to ensure sandbagging does not take place. In the wake of sandbagging incidents in the USA, the chess federation has minimum entry ratings based on ratings and prize winnings that are accordingly determined. Workshops are also conducted.
But the problem of sandbagging is the dark undercurrent in the technological advancement that Chess has made. The explosion of online chess is the prime reason. Anonymity and accessibility, in addition to engine uses for big chess manipulations, which are readily available, contribute to the problem. In fact, every single year, the problem of sandbagging is increasing in chess, and with technology now at the forefront, the problems will only be mounting.
The above explainer has been written by Siddharth Vishwanathan, who is Sports Tak's in-house chess expert.