Board Game Arena

Sticky post says in this forum we shouldnt call out other players by name, however i want to report a player, but report button doesnt have this behavior mentioned. How do i contact administrators to make a report?

A player played against me and then when he was 40 points ahead and clearly winning, game was already ended, only like 1 move left and he conceded. I asked why does he do that and he said that he doesnt want to pay 5$ for premium account, so he is intentionally lowering his rating, to have more games available at lower levels.

I said - come on dude - you can pay 5$ and create games, if you do this, youre ruining expirience for others, higher rating player plays against low levels. In chess its called sandbagging and can be a reason for disqualification. In Dota2 its called smurfing and is definately punishable, most likely bannable offence. Because in dota there are 5 players each team and 10 players total in 1 game, so 1 smurf ruins game for 9 players, killing opponents super easy and his own team doesnt get to kill anyone, so they just walk around doing nonsense. Of course he feels good about himself, but other 9 players are feeling like crap.

In chess people can lower their ratings to get into lower-rated tournaments so they can either win more and feel good or get money prizes.

In this case - he is avoiding to pay subscription fee and is ruining expirience for other players.

But there is no such topic in report page when pressed "report" button after game has ended. So how do i contact administrators?



Here is the chat log, without names, because sticky post said i shouldnt call out by names, i replaced his name with "Him":
why do you resign huh? 05:42 AM
why 05:42 AM
Him: cause 05:42 AM
Him: if i have high rating 05:42 AM
Him: they won’t play with me 05:43 AM
but if you dont have high rating 05:43 AM
then youre playing with lower rated opponents 05:43 AM
thats cheating 05:43 AM
Him: i agree on that i was lucky 05:43 AM
dude it doesnt matter 05:43 AM
you are cheater 05:43 AM
Him: no premium user 05:43 AM
doesnt matter about lucky anymore 05:43 AM
Him: can’t play game like you 05:44 AM
so you want to cheat and not pay 5$ 05:44 AM
maybe go rob a bank 05:44 AM
Him: sick of waitting 05:44 AM
pay 5 $ 05:44 AM
Him: i will consider that thx 05:44 AM
i will report you 05:44 AM
i hope there is a rule against this 05:44 AM
lol 05:45 AM
youre cheater and scammer 05:45 AM
Him: have a nice day 05:45 AM
never play with me again 05:45 AM
better not with anyone 05:45 AM
Him: yeah good bro 05:45 AM

What connection is there between a lower rating and having more games available to play? What does being a paid user have to do with it?

Honestly, from that chat log I think you could be moderated as well.

Everything stillframe says.

Also apart from winning the game you shouldn't have, you still played the game. If you consider the player rating only not the actual player ability then the possibility is that you should have won against a low rated player. So you're seeing a problem when there really isn't one. You'll also learn more from your losses, so you've personally gained more this way. I would just let it go.

@stillframe Well i was just upset, i wasnt doing anyting thats upsetting the fair play. About your questions: Im sorry, i thought this was clear to everyone, i havent done much forum-ing, so i actually dont know what people think about, so i maybe had to be more clear.

To answer your first question:
Lower rating and having more games available to play is connected like this - there are much more lower rated players then higher rated players. Lets say for sake of argument there are 10 000 players rated 100-200 elo, then following a normal curve of increase 200-300 might have 5000 players, 300-400 elo - 2000 players, 400-500 elo - 800 players and 500+ elo might have only 200 players.

So if youre elo 550, you might have only few hundred players at your or a little above or below your level. And players rated 200 wont want to play a player rated 550, because it will be very hard game for them and probably 95% chance to lose. Thats why instead of going up to 500, hes trying to stay at 300 or below, so he has more players willing to play with him.

Answer to your second question: Being a paid user allows you to create games, while if youre not subscriber, then you can only join games other people make. (or for automatic system it means - you have to wait longer, maybe instead of 20 seconds, you have to wait 5-10minutes until game is found).

So by keeping his rating low, he can find games very quickly and avoid paying subscribtion fee 5$ each month.

@RicardoRix Answers to those questions that stillframe asked above. Yes, i agree with you that i have gained more, i have learned from my loss and gained elo points. But thats not what im upset about, i should have lost that game.

Can you rephrase your 2nd sentence? I didnt understand that. How do you mean that i should have won against lower rated player if elo doesnt represent the full player ability? It looks like a complicated sentence. Normally i should win against lower rated player if elo DOES represent his abilities. I dont understand what you mean and dont see the problem.

I think you should be more upset about all these players refusing to play higher rated opponents instead. Bro is just trying to play and nobody says yes to him. I'm a 700 elo player(top30) and currently a rank2 arena player(realistically I deserve rank10, it's a luck based game), so you can see something is a bit off with my arena performance and elo; I should be a 750 elo player, which I did kinda reach when I spammed arena games only. This is because I play a lot of games without draft with other non-competitive settings like colonies against low rated players, so an inevitable loss is just waiting for me and every such loss hits for almost 20. The reason I do it is to practice all scenarios, and especially playing against worse players who had better luck in a game and still try to grind out a win - this is very important to learn on how to trick players into handing you a win, which is a completely different experience from playing certain players in the top10 who are impossible to trick, and, if anything, will trick me. So maybe bro is also doing that, or maybe bro just wants to play anyone as he said, both give him practice. If his true rating isn't 600+, he has a lot to improve anyway, and I would personally advise to play weaker players to learn the game.
Bottom line, I think you should just let bro play the way he wants. Alternatively he just keeps making new accounts or purposely plays bad in some games to lose on points to keep his rating low, neither of which solves your perceived problem.

Conceding a game while victory is imminent - that's an odd thing to do, but I don't think it's against the rules.

Seallv wrote: ↑25 March 2026, 00:40 Can you rephrase your 2nd sentence? I didnt understand that. How do you mean that i should have won against lower rated player if elo doesnt represent the full player ability? It looks like a complicated sentence. Normally i should win against lower rated player if elo DOES represent his abilities. I dont understand what you mean and dont see the problem.

Yes, exactly that. There is no problem. Just looking at ELO: It's irrelevant he's actual ability outside of the game result.
If it's a high ELO player you're likely to lose, if he's low then you will win.
He was low ELO and you won. A fairly normal outcome for that game. No foul taking place.

As the other user has also said, there is nothing stopping them creating new accounts to get low rated games. Seems like the dude just wants to play, doesn't care about ELO or ranking. Very, very difficult to stop that, even if you wanted to try.

FrankJones wrote: ↑25 March 2026, 18:09 Conceding a game while victory is imminent - that's an odd thing to do, but I don't think it's against the rules.

I expected there to be some rule against sandbagging, but when I looked I did not find one.

It might be against the rules to create a second account to play as an expert with 0 Elo. But I'm not sure. And if it is against the rules, it's likely difficult to enforce.

What you guys are basically saying is - there is no rule against sandbagging, from message of dizinovi: "top of the leaderboard is so scarce that lots of people cant find opponents so its okey" (i understand dizinovi where youre coming from with that statement tho) and if there were a rule against this, it would be very hard to enforce.

Well thats a minus to BGA rule and moderation system then. But if its allowed, then i guess its allowed. What can we do.

P.S. RicardoRix, i dont try to be insulting, but i think you missed the idea - he is high level player, who is trying to keep his elo low (i would estimate around 400-500 elo.) i was only barely 300. After that loss i dropped below 300. He was not low elo player. He was over 300 at the time of game, higher rated then me.