to sandbag? We all know it will piss
people off, and unless we believe
sandbaggers are by nature horrible
people who enjoy the pain of others, it
seems odd to make that choice.
During the discussion with Hendra
it became apparent that the sandbag
story is similar to the story of David
and Goliath. Goliath, in this case, is
the overclocker with near-unlimited
resources. Goliath can bin more
CPUs than anyone else, and has
plenty of time to re-do scores if
necessary. David, on the other hand,
can only buy one or two CPUs, and
only has two weekends to set a
score. To have a chance at winning,
David has to outsmart Goliath, and
in online overclocking competitions,
sandbagging is the way to do it.
It’s very simple: if you know your
competitor has better hardware, or
can bin for better, you need to come up
with a way to beat him. Not informing
about your best results is a great
tactic, as it prevents Goliath from
looking for better hardware or rebenching his superior hardware.
“I could’ve beaten that”
One of the comments from sandbaghaters is that they could’ve beaten
the winning score with their setup.
The argumentation is that putting a
score on the board earlier serves as a
target, and it motivates overclockers
to push harder. That is true, but the
argumentation goes both ways as
we know from the David and Goliath
analogy. In this case we should
actually not address the sandbagger,
but the person who was beaten by the
sandbagger. The question is: “if your
setup could’ve beaten the winning
score, why didn’t you?”
After all, a principle for all
competitive environments is that
each competitor does the best he or
she can. This principle applies to all
sports: holding back and thinking
your current result will be enough
is not the right attitude. Think about
Formula 1 for example: a driver who
finishes in the 11th place during the
qualifying phase because he thought
the time was good enough and refused
to do another lap, will be blamed by
the team manager. Or the Champion’s
League football, where a coach might
opt to start with the B-squad to give
the players of the A-squad rest, and
figures qualification is a guarantee.
If the team loses, and then also loses
the qualification, everyone will ask
why the coach didn’t play the A-squad.
Both examples have happened many
times before and the same applies
18 The OverClocker Issue 29 | 2014
to overclocking. If you get beaten by
a sandbagged score that you’re sure
you could’ve beaten, you should slap
yourself over the head for not pushing
harder. The reason for not winning
is because you didn’t max out the
system, not because you didn’t have
the target!
SUGGESTION:
DARK DAY AND POPCORN TIME.
Until now, I have tried to form an
argument supporting the idea that
sandbagging isn’t as bad as we
might think. I have explained how
introducing a NASCAR-style point
system increases the amount of
sandbagged scores, and how it
imposes a logical error by rating
benchmark scores by the time it was
submitted. I have also pointed out
that it is a necessary tactic for less
resourceful overclockers to beat those
with plenty of time and hardware
binning possibilities. I concluded
by pointing out that people who say
they could’ve beaten the sandbagged
score, should ask themselves why
they didn’t max out the system.
Conclusion: the sandbag is a
legitimate tactic which we should
embrace to give the less resourceful
more chances to win a competition.
Of course, all this reasoning doesn’t
resolve the issue. It doesn’t matter
how much ratio and logic you throw
at the issue, if you are beaten by a
sandbagger you will feel angry. We
still need a solution! Because I believe
we should embrace sandbagging as
a legitimate practice, I suggest to
address the problem from a different
angle: the emotional aspect. After
all, the debate is not if the best score
should get the most points. We all
agree on that. But being beaten by
a sandbagged score triggers an
emotional reaction. The emotional
reaction may be caused by the
dissymmetry of the competition and
the point grading. Let me explain.
The competitive aspect of an
overclocking competition is spread
over a specific timeframe, but is
asymmetric. For example: someone
may compete during the first week