Rant: Sandbagging

[xxbassplayerxx]

I hate that it's a legitimate strategy in this hobby. In my opinion, it's for people who are afraid their best isn't good enough.

[knopflerbruce]

With sandbagging you make sure people do their best as they know that there is a huge chance that the best score from their competitors is not posted yet. If you "had" to post straight away it would be a HUGE advantage for those who chose to bench later. Sandbagging just makes the playing field level. IMO: Personally i don't find it that fun, but sometimes it's necessary. I try to do a bit of both, save some scores for the last day, and post new ones every now and then to stay #1 while the stage is running.

[Christian Ney]

Just bench to the limit so sandbagging or not result is the same if you post it early or later

Edited September 4, 2012 by Christian Ney

[K404]

Agree with Christian. Your best is your best and it'll either be beaten or it won't be. I hate sandbagging though, especially in hardware categories.

 

I've never done it and I can't think of a situation where i'd change that.

[der8auer]

I don't like it either. I always submit my best score.

[I.M.O.G.]

Just bench to the limit so sandbagging or not result is the same if you post it early or later

 

Easier said than done! If we all benched to the limit every time, each CPU/GPU would effectively become single use disposable... The only way to be sure you've pushed it to its limit is to kill it pushing it harder.

 

I push harder than I would otherwise when there are a couple people close to but ahead of me. If I'm in the lead, I try to ensure the hardware lives to run another day so maybe I don't increase that extra few decimal places on voltage... Few of us have endless buckets of hardware/money.

 

Sofos just beat one of my gold cups by 23 points. I would guess he's sandbagging a backup. But I hadn't pushed that hard to take that gold cup, now that I see there's some competition, I'll push it a bit harder to try to hang onto it... And hopefully the GPU still lives to run another day.

 

At the top of the rankings, half the battle is putting up the best score, and the other half is an endurance race to see who burns up their cherry gear first.

 

Sandbagging is a good strategy to get others like me aiming lower than they need to, and maybe the next time they try to comeback on your score the gear will have degraded. I've always put up my best results though, and just waited for others to come after it, then rerun if needed. That said, I have more than a few GPUs that would score great on my current IBs, but have degraded after running them on SB.

Edited September 4, 2012 by I.M.O.G.

[xxbassplayerxx]

I meant to direct this at competitions, not so much standard benching.

 

knopflerbruce, perhaps we should eliminate all but one day of the competition... Announce the date that every should turn in scores and leave it at that.

 

Or provide incentive to submitting scores earlier, as we have done in the past...

[Christian Ney]

I usually say when I am coming into a competition so people know they have to look for spot #2

 

As for the team cup, I benched only the last two days of the competition 54 hours on a row and I submited results to hwbot when I did finish with RDRAM which was about 45 minutes before the end of competition.

[zeneffect]

is it considered sandbagging if you are benching until the last min to submit? I personally dont think so, its just running the race until the end.

[reggiesanchez]

I tried sandbagging and my thumbstick died...... Fail

[just_nuke_em]

I meant to direct this at competitions, not so much standard benching.

See 1, 2, 3

All a direct result of someone beating my previous one. I would have to agree with IMOG, that competition drives higher scores. Unfortunately, you can't really prevent sandbagging unless you give weight to early subs so as to force people to put the best up early. But that creates problems with timing (finding time to bench, getting LN2 fill up, ect), and in the end people will still complain about it.

 

And then there is the stuff that ney and zeneffect bring up, which can be indistinguishable from sandbagging, which would be solved by time weighting scores...

 

I would like to think that we as a community could stop doing this if we all agreed, but that's not gona happen...

Edited September 4, 2012 by just_nuke_em

[uncle fester]

Why cry about sandbagging, let each participant play the game the way they want to. Sand bagging is a smart strategy, noone see you coming and you can push to target their scores. If put up best straight away you set a target for them and they will push harder until they best you. Crying about this sgrategy is childish. Htfu princess.

[Xtreme Addict]

"My backup is bigger than your backup" should be our motto

 

Sandbagging isn't fun when you are a victim, but just like fester said - it's a strategy. It doesn't break games rules and it is a bit harder to compete with someone if you don't know his numbers. During contests - if you see someone monster score, cause he found a golden cpu/card you can mobilize and try to find better and beat him, buy more parts, tests more tweaks and so on but with sandbagging sometimes you think that you are safe, you had won a competition but in fact in last few minutes it appears someone beat you, it can be frustrating but we have to live with that, in fact when everyone is sandbagging - it isn't a problem anymore lol, cause no one knows their results until the end

[M.Beier]

[Lucky_n00b]

Even though i sometimes be a 'victim' of sandbagging , I personally don't hate it at all.

 

I mean, If the score I push out myself managed to get beaten by someone else at the last minute, that simply means my score wasn't good enough, right?. Why blame my loss on someone who give the score later than I do?

[Hondacity]

I totally respect the higher score...

[xxbassplayerxx]

Why cry about sandbagging, let each participant play the game the way they want to. Sand bagging is a smart strategy, noone see you coming and you can push to target their scores. If put up best straight away you set a target for them and they will push harder until they best you. Crying about this sgrategy is childish. Htfu princess.

 

 

Not crying, just saying it's dumb that it's a legitimate strategy. As far as I'm aware, I've never been a target of sandbagging...

[TaPaKaH]

so you imply that hwbot would become a much better place if people didn't have the full freedom of uploading their results whenever they want to?

[I.M.O.G.]

so you imply that hwbot would become a much better place if people didn't have the full freedom of uploading their results whenever they want to?

 

I take a different implication. The current system is setup in such a way so as to encourage sandbagging - there is nothing gained by posting high and early. In fact, posting high and early is incredibly ill advised.

 

In the current system, the only reason anyone would post high and early is to raise the bar, letting others know what your hand holds and encouraging them to push harder. Anyone posting high and early is either foolish, or dismissing strategy to encourage others to push harder. Not such a bad thing, and there are a lot of people on hwbot that say screw strategy, we're here in the spirit of furthering the hobby not just to win.

 

This is only a function of the current hwbot system. It could change in the future.

 

If competition points were won by "capturing the flag" for a specified amount of time, the new system would reward posting high and early, and encourage everyone to push harder as soon as possible... Rather than the current system, that encourages posting high at the last minute, to take the lead only as close as possible to the very end.

 

"Better" is always a never-ending debate however.

Edited September 5, 2012 by I.M.O.G.

[TaPaKaH]

They can just make the competition last 2 hrs, but announce it 3 months in advance.

[zeneffect]

They can just make the competition last 2 hrs, but announce it 3 months in advance.

 

that would work if they dont release the competition background until the comp starts... man that would be interesting.

[xxbassplayerxx]

I think he means 2 hours reserved for submissions.

 

But that seems to take away the months of sharing information and tweaks (even between teams). I love the threads talking about how to improve scores and then you get users that read but don't help at all and then submit scores at the end of the competition using everything they read.

[Massman]

This is only a function of the current hwbot system. It could change in the future.

 

If competition points were won by "capturing the flag" for a specified amount of time, the new system would reward posting high and early, and encourage everyone to push harder as soon as possible... Rather than the current system, that encourages posting high at the last minute, to take the lead only as close as possible to the very end.

 

Good argument, but I don't think it's really a function of the current hwbot system.

 

Imho, sandbagging is a phenomenon that is caused by two things:

 

1) the game we're playing is based on the 'final' result you achieved over a given period. The way we compete (well, enjoy our hobby) is not realtime; it's an indirect competition

2) people want/need time to prepare their competition submissions, because for most of us (excluding myself for example) overclocking is just a hobby. The more realtime the competition gets, the less time you have to make a score, the more pressure there is to succeed.

 

The HWBOT system is one that has these two as principles, but it's not exclusive to the HWBOT system.

 

There are several ways of forcing people to submit higher scores during the competition (eg: like the moa qualifiers), but the only change here is the timeframe in which sandbagging can take place. It doesn't take sandbagging away, it just reduces the time in between obtaining the score and posting the score. If you pull things to the extreme, you could suggest to have a competition where you have to submit new scores on a daily basis and points are awarded on the ranking on a daily basis (maybe two months to prepare). In essence, then your "overclocking" competition becomes a "backup score posting"-event. It's an artificial way to make it look like everyone's benching realtime, but really they are just logging in to submit a score.

 

If you're lucky, there are two or more users with similar backup scores and you have some kind of a battle. Worst (and most realistic) scenario is that after two months of preparing, one person has a decent lead and is just winning every day with 30 backup scores differing 1pt.

 

But interesting, though. I think our HCE can support it, so maybe we could try it out?

 

They can just make the competition last 2 hrs, but announce it 3 months in advance.

 

In that case you essentially force everyone to sandbag (="have scores, but don't show") for 3 months and then submit everything at once.

 

Is that more fun?

[Jimba]

why not have a competition on one day only and announce it suddenly,that way there is no to little sandbagging?

[jjjc]

why not have a competition on one day only and announce it suddenly,that way there is no to little sandbagging?

 

I dont think everybody could just drop their lives to bench for a 24 hour comp with no notice.