alanti:Joking apart, sandbagging is sandbagging, regardless of whether credits are involved.
Even when there are no credits involved, sandbagging can occur—I concur. However, at the heart of a sandbagger is someone intending to deceive (or misrepresent). Even if the sandbagging (i.e., intending to deceive) player does not accomplish the deception, that player is still a sanbagger in my view.
If a player is not intending to misrepresent, there is no valid sandbagging occurring.
Generally, any golfer who misleads others about his ability level, claiming to be worse than he actually is at golf, might be a sandbagger. If the person is not trying to gain from that deception, no problem (he might even be aware he is misleading others about his ability - he might just have low self-esteem). But a golfer who deliberately misleads others about his ability in order to gain in some way - to win a bet, for example - is a sandbagger.
One reason I like the Stand Bag Plus is because I can switch to WGT Starters or a mix-up of different clubs depending on the game I join. Once I chose to use a 230 3Wood as a driver in an Alt Shot game and got complaints from my partner for not having a driver. Sometimes, even when I choose to not go big on the driver from the front tees, so as to not offend the other team, I rub my teammate the wrong way...oh well.
MainzMan: I'd rather ranked though, I've never seen the point of practice games unless you're learning a new set of clubs or figuring out shot distances.
I get it, my partner didn't want to lose and damage his stats. A lot of times people become gripey about losing because it will reflect on their statistics page, I empathize with that which is partly why I've been refraining from Alt Shot for about 4 months now (partly because I lost a friend over it and was severely castigated in another, and then my Master tier partner quit on me). Practice games are low stress and a chance to win some stuff, a win-win.
I personally like to play multi-player stroke play practice rounds, but people rarely join those games—mostly it is match play or Alternate Shot games that are more popular.
alanti: This method...is just another flaw but if it exists and it is not breaking the T&C, why not exploit it if you want to increase your XPs.
I understand this statement. If it is not breaking the Terms & Conditions, why not use it? This is where the issue of ethics (when I say ethics, I mean a person's mental operating system, à la Mac or Windows) comes into play. Sometimes the lawmakers do not have enough time or knowledge to update laws and to adequately classify certain activities as illegal. If they did have time, those activities would certainly be outlawed.
If we think of the many laws in the U.S.A., they were not ratified and signed by a President on the first day of independence from the British Empire. However, people thought that some of the laws we currently have were necessary to enact, which is why they eventually were signed into law.
My point is that the necessity of governing and sometimes restraining one's actions is not solely based on what the physical script of the law currently indicates. Each of us has our own system (set of ethics code) that our operating system runs on, some of us on are older versions that haven't received the Service Pack (sometimes a good thing), or upgraded.
For instance, hypothetically speaking, food safety laws. Sometimes a practice might be unsafe to you or your loved ones health and it is not
yet specifically mentioned in the
FDA's standards for food preparation, storage, etc. Yes, it is not currently illegal to do those activities, but is it safe, or hazardous?
We must use our discernment to decide on what to do in certain situations where there is no law to guide us. Hopefully we have cultivated an ingrained habit of only judging properly and not only judging according to appearance.
That being said, I feel at the very least that same hypothetical scenario applies to this instance. I say "at the very least" because this instance is actual because it is, from my view, covered in the Terms & Conditions.
Click the
Terms & Conditions at the bottom of the browser. After the page loads press [Ctrl] + [F] and type in "exploit" and press [Enter] three times. It states this:
"When posting Submissions to or otherwise using the Site and/or the services, you agree not to:
- Exploit any bug in the Site to gain unfair advantage in the game and communicate the existence of any such bug" (emphasis added).
Now I am not a certified legal expert on contractual agreements, but if this section of the Ts & Cs somehow does not apply to the method that ChinaJohn and cpjs announced, I feel the hypothetical scenario I gave above still does apply because of the very real threat that an infestation of an aggressive form of "acute multi-accountitis" may pose—that is simply my opinion.
Even if WGT has no misgivings with such an infestation because it helps business, I chose not to announce this back in September because you guys (i.e., the players) may not want such an announcement (especially from a level 98 amateur) and the subsequent infestation to occur.
In my first post in this thread, I expressed my uncertainty that this is a bug because of how easy (at least from my view) I know it is for the programmers to stop it. That being said, I still do believe it is a bug. I've known exactly how to stop it for months too.
alanti: I play when I want and seldom get past 10 days consecutive now
I realized that I lost my consecutive streak today, I guess I was so busy typing up my previous post this after noon that I forgot...oh well. That offer to play a stroke play round in practice mode from Champion Tees on Tournament Greens is still on the table for any takers :D.
Hope to see you on course,
JMan
P.S. I'm a free baller, and yes, I'm still learning how to hit my clubs ;)