Sand Bagging

Another name for ScheduleChicken.

I know this term from cards where it is holding back bids to get the other team to overbid tricks and thus beat them. So in the context of ScheduleChicken, sand bagging is a strategy for winning, where you are holding back information of progress and surprise the other player when you say you are good to go and they have to hold the schedule.

This term is also used in a number of other applications. I think the original usage was for automobile racing. Heavy sandbags added to a car during time trials would make the car seem to be slow through corners and accelerating on the straights. The engine would still sound right because it was under full load. This might make an opposing team feel overconfident and cause them to retune the car to be "softer" -- that is, easier for the driver to handle at the expense of absolute performance. When the time came to race for real the sandbags came out.

Another usage is in military style bullseye shooting competition. Contestants would be required to fire ten rounds into a target. Typically, the top competitors would end up with one ragged hole that only showed part of the circumference of six or seven rounds. However, there was always the possibility of having one stray round go outside the ragged hole in the middle. "Sandbaggers," or cheaters, would be able to put six or seven rounds into the middle of the X-ring and then put the other three or four rounds into the sandbag to the side of the target mount. They would claim that all ten rounds went through the hole in the middle.

Also appears in FearAndLoathingInLasVegas: "What's going on in this country when a scumsucker like that can get away with sandbagging a doctor of journalism?"

Oh, yeah -- I forgot to mention the theater context. Sandbags were used as counterweights for lifting props, backgrounds, etc. If you happened to be directly underneath a counterweight during a scene change you could be "sandbagged" on the noggin. Not real pleasant.

Also a term from poker. Google should have lots of references.