Have you ever sandbagged?

[The KingPin]

Sandbagging (The more PC word is “Pin Management”) usually you hear the word “handicap” following shortly later, I think it’s just a lot of smoke, little fire.
I feel the majority of the time that when you hear “Sand bagger” it’s in jest or someones mad because they lost.
99% 0f the time if you look at the scores. The reason someone lost to the higher handicap team/person. It’s because the low ave. person had a good night or the high ave. bowled bad or just bowled their ave. Sandbagging didn’t figure in to it.
Sandbagging is to gain advantage in leagues or tournaments. But to gain that advantage you have to do it all the time. Doing it for just for a little doesn't gain you enough advantage to make it worth while

In league you could sandbag the entire league just to have a low entering average for tournaments. Like getting into the classified division to clean up.
This wouldn’t really hurt your team in league. you’d just be a low average team member, but it doesn’t really help. You might have a advantage once in awhile, helping in position rounds or for winning pots/brackets with your high handicap. But you can’t do it all the time or your average will shoot up and your advantage will disappear.
Also the rest of your team better be bowling good or all of you be doing the same thing and don't care if they come in last. Plus your bowling bad all the time, thats not going to help your game any.
Now you could sandbag just the first few weeks of league. So you could set some real high league award scores and enter lots of pots/brackets and clean up once or twice at the start of the season. Thats about a one shoot deal though.
You could just sandbag the last few weeks of league so you’d have a low entering average for next years league/tournaments. But you’d be doing it at the worst time for your team, unless your near dead last anyway and nobody cares.
Sandbagging during the middle of the season is a waste of time. You can’t drop your average enough to make a big difference. It's hard to change your average mid season unless you do it for a long period. Just one or two nights won’t change your average enough to gain a useful amount of handicap.

As for Tournaments
The only time you could sandbag “During” a tournament Is in the weekly,monthly, reoccurring tournaments, where you could establish a low tournament average.
In those you’d have throw away several tournaments, to establish a low average just to win some down the road or gain advantage in pots/brackets.
These type of tournaments usually don’t have large prize payouts and depending on how the rules for entering/tournament averages are set up it could be a lot more trouble than it's worth.
As for the non reoccurring/ annual type tournaments. You can’t sandbag during those, theres no point. In them your depending on a low entering average that you have already established during league. To have a advantage in these.
Sandbagging is not a major problem, not to say there's not someone is doing it. Tournaments and leagues are not filled full of sand bagger's.
And no I haven't done it.

Great write up. Wow I need to read it again and again. Pin management it is

[bowl1820]

Here's for the Bowler's Moot court.

Sandbagging is under USBC Rule 17a part 3 and say's

"Establishing an average below the player’s ability to gain an unfair advantage in handicap or classified
competition."

1-"Establishing an average" happens when you start a league/tournamentt. So this rule prevents you from sandbagging at that time. So would that mean that you "could" sandbag after the "Establishing an average" period has passed?

2-"player’s ability" doe's this just refer to just "physical skill" or doe's it include use of equipment? Are you sandbagging if your using 100% of your skills, but different equipment?

Example:
When your using a high performance ball, good quality bowling shoes and a wrist brace Your a 210 ave bowler. But then you come in and using just your physical skills at 100% you ave 180 with a house ball and house shoes and no wrist brace.