Sandbagging

The word travels an unusually violent road. Sandbag is a noun from the 1580s; by 1882 it named a bully who uses a sandbag as a stunning weapon that leaves no mark. The modern competitive sense comes from cards: the verb is recorded in 1940 in poker, meaning “refrain from raising at the first opportunity in hopes of raising more steeply later,” and by the 1970s the sense “pretend weakness” appears, perhaps extended from that poker usage. Chess uses precisely that meaning: sandbagging involves deliberately losing rated games to lower one's rating and qualify for a lower-rated, and often lucrative, tournament section — a problem most common in the United States. No source consulted dates the term's first appearance in chess writing.