Quote:
Originally Posted by BobJoeJim
There's a guy in my tiny little club out on the middle of nowhere that had never played a rated game in his life, but is definitely Class A strength.
For what it's worth, the particular gentleman I was discussing in that big post who I said I thought would never drop below 1800 again in his life? He had a bad tournament two weeks after my post and dropped to 1789. However he bounced back at the Golden State Open and is now 1855, and no longer provisional.
He also won a blitz game against an IM in the first round of the blitz tournament (the IM finished 7/8 and in clear first place). However he only ended up at 3/8 in the blitz event, after getting cocky and paying the price for it (his assessment, not mine).
I bring all of this up because it ties in to another aspect of potential sandbagging that we haven't discussed: psychological factors.
Playing a serious, long, over the board tournament game at standard time controls, against an experienced opponent, is hard. Nerves and inexperience will make it much harder. Even if someone could accurately be described as "2200 strength" based on their overall chess knowledge, their results online, etcetera, if they were to tank several tournaments to try to sandbag this Millionaire Chess event, they might not be as big of a threat in the lower sections as they "should" be. Tanking won't exactly get them the tournament experience they need; in fact it will just reinforce all the wrong lessons.
And with that much money on the line, nerves will definitely come into play for everyone. Experience will be a big factor in who can keep the nerves in check. The more I think about it, the more confident I am that I can extend my prediction of their being some very strong players in the low sections with a further provision:
I am confident that there will be at least one player in the Class C section who would objectively be assessed as "expert strength" or better based on analysis of their online games - who ends up with a performance rating of 1600 or below in the actual tournament.