Are you referring to this player’s losses to 6 lower-rated opponents (in his last 2 events), with a draw against a 2300 thrown in for good measure?
Bill Smythe
At first glance, it would seem like an effort to drop below 2000.
However, there doesn’t seem to be enough data to form the lynching party yet.
I like the loss to the 1200. Was this person playing while impaired? If not, than it seems a bit fishy to me.
While a bit fishy, he hasn’t played in a couple of years. Also, look at the last one played in 2005. A bit of a mixed result there too. 
Yes, it is very suspicious.
Can anyone come with reasons why the TDs who permitted those suspicious losses to be rated should not be brought up before TDCC?
Are there procedures for this? I wasn’t aware that a TD was responsible for or was allowed to edit results in the rating report. About the only thing a TD can do, as far as I know, is forfeit a sandbagger, but then it takes a subjective decision on the part of the TD to determine that the player had sandbagged.
Having been one of the recipients of his rating points last night I can can tell you for sure that it was a clear effort to dump. Set up the position and you’ll see that losing on time was the safest way to make sure he did not win.
White: Pawns on a3, e3,g3,h2 Bishop on b4 Rooks on b1, f1, Queen on f3, Knight on g2, King on g1
Black: Pawns a7,b7, f5, g6, h6, Bishop on g7, Rooks on a8, e7, Knight on b2, Queen on c2.
My last move was Bb4 attacking his rook. He sat there and let his time run out instead of moving the rook to d7 or e6. He’s up a pawn, and probably going to win my e pawn, or get his rook to the 7th.
I suppose I could have screwed him up by resigning, but I got TD revenge by accepting the gift, and then alerting Steve to what had happened. This was confirmed when I found the results from the previous week’s event that Steve had not been at.
I love the jokers who dump against me, not realizing that I’ve been a TD at the World Open many times, and that I will give Bill and Steve a heads up when I see it. 
Since Steve was the TD in the 2nd event I think that he is doing his job - noting an issue and asking for input.
Hopefully people realize I’m tweaking Steve a bit on this.
However the underlying issues are serious.
What should happen in cases like this?
IMHO, the FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE has to be the TD. The TD is in a FAR better position than the USCF office ever will be to know what really happened, BEFORE the event gets submitted for rating.
The USCF office does not manually review every rating report, any mechanical review would have to follow some set of rules as to when a result is questionable and when it is not, and that’s not going to be an easy set of rules to devise.
In fact, the program that checks the rating report already DOES question results when they are outside of some (possibly simplistic) performance expectations, and the TD has to override them in order to get the event rated.
Of this player’s last two events, the most recent of them did require an override by the TD, the other did not.
Moreover, the TD has to sign (or click to agree to) the following statement:
Shouldn’t the TD’s feet be held to the flames on compliance with the above statement as much as the player’s for the underlying suspicious conduct?
This isn’t the only set of suspicious results in the database, I can think of some results from Utah that were at least as bad.
But we don’t have any detailed policies in place as to what the office CAN or SHOULD do about them, beyond what’s in the rulebook.
If a TD notices that a player loses to a couple of lower players in his / her particular tournament, I’m not sure that alone enables any action on the TD’s part. I mean, how is the TD to know (or prove) that the player was throwing the game as opposed to simply having a bad day, for example woke up with a hangover or feeling the effects of a cold? Even short draws between players apparently can’t be penalized absent evidence that there was a “fix” of some kind. I guess I’m wondering what the TD is authorized by the rules to do given that it is only speculation that the game is being dumped.
Yeah, what Ken said.
Seriously, I work mostly with scholastics where this is probably less of an issue. But what ought to trigger my suspicions? I’ve done the override before but never had any suspicion in the cases that the loss by the higher rated player was anything more than 1) a blunder, 2) a case of a vastly under rated lower player, or 3) a generally bad day by the higher player.
So when I am submitting a tournament, and there is considerable pressure to submit quickly, what do I do with such a situation as Steve has faced? Also remembe in this case that the pattern goes back to another event he didn’t run. I doubt many TD’s would have done the research he has done to even raise this issue as much as he has (that they might ought to do so is another issue - point is few would probably even notice)
Any thoughts?
Ken, if the TD doesn’t know for sure, and thus cannot act, how is the USCF office supposed to be in any better position to detect and act upon such a situation?
I have disqualified someone from a tournament I ran because he lost to a player rated a good 800 points below him, and that game was NOT submitted for rating, either. (I watched him hang several pieces, IMHO very intentionally.)
WOW, that certainly sounds precedent setting 
I’ve double forfeited players in scholastics who agreed to short draws so that they could both got to State Finals. In one case, the players presented me with a scoresheet that recorded 1. e4 e5 Draw agreed!. I made them go back and finish the game, whereupon they later presented me with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 Draw Agreed, and I double forfeted them. BOTH were my students!
My guess would be that this player may be given a CCA floor of 2000 to keep him out of any upcoming under 2000 sections.
I was suspicious as soon as I saw my 3rd round pairing. I even got up and checked the wallchart during the game. I was curious as to why I was playing such a high rated player when I only had .5 out of 2 rounds.
I don’t buy into the he hasn’t played in two years arguement. He spent 11 minutes on a move in a position that wasn’t complicated. One does not normally take 11 minutes on move 18 of a g/30 game.
Sounds like a definite 2000 floor to me.
It’s interesting that you said CCA floor rather than USCF floor. Some players bouncing around 2000 who also teach would like to get a safe 2000 USCF floor (and be able to consistently charge higher teaching fees due to being an expert), and obviously throwing a game would be an easy way to do it if that was the result. By giving a CCA floor instead, that eliminates one of the incentives to actually be caught “trying to sandbag”.
The situation does raise an interesting issue. What is the level of certainty that a TD should have in order to nullify a tournament game or file an ethics claim for cheating? 51% ? 95%? I don’t believe that this is laid out anywhere.
Glenn
I personally beat a player rated about 700 points higher than me recently, but that’s only because he lost on time in a G/30 when I was chasing his king around a little and he was trying to figure out the last move. He is in his 70s and totally forgot about the clock. P.S. … he was creaming me at the time.
I suppose one has to take all the circumstances into account. PPW’s situation sounds quite different.
Which is why the TD should be the first line of defense, because he or she is there, and has the ability to observe the games, question the players, etc.
Which leads to a question nobody has asked yet:
What does Steve expect anyone to do about this?