Which is worse? Cheating or sandbagging a cheater?

If I really played Rh6 and Ra6 like that, I must have been drunk. I only looked at the endgame a short while ago.

It's possible I was trying something, intending Ra6 but played the other rook by mistake.

Sandbagging usually means deliberately lowering your rating, sometimes to enter a rating-restricted tournament for an easier win. I've never heard of the term "sandbagging a cheater".

Both are wrong, but for me cheating with outside assistance is definitely worse not just because it destroys the integrity of the game, but because it's a waste of time for everyone. Unlike strong players, even weak engines will never fall for a tactic, which just makes the whole game meaningless. So even if you don't think cheating is bad morally, the whole purpose of a chess site is to foster chess between human players, which requires strict anti-cheating measures.

Both cheating and sandbagging are against the rules, that's all that matters. However one thing that everybody in this thread misses is that you can de facto sandbag your rating in a way that's not even against the rules. How? By zerking a lot of games. Now it's true that the great majority of people who zerk don't do it with the intention to sandbag their rating but the effect is still there so in my opinion games in which one of the players zerks should not be rated.

@Brian-E said in #30:

The variety of postings in this topic, and the title too, leave me struggling to understand what this whole discussion is about.

However, I want to say the following.

(1) Cheating is an absolute no-no and must be severely dealt with by the chess world.

(2) However, removing people from the chess world for life if they have cheated in the past is draconian and wrong.

(3) ... Not least because "miscarriages of justice" can and do occur. There were several high profile ones around 2019-2020 on chessdotcom while I was a member there, also a member of the Cheating Forum there.

I have a great deal of empathy with a lot of what @UnderwaterDillDough is writing.

Yes, I agree with you @Brian-E. I am just a bit confused trying to understand @UnderwaterDillDough's point. This is why Lichess takes strict measures against the ones who violate the site rules and also have appeals at the same time I believe.

https://lichess.org/page/appeal