Sandbag

We sandbagged the basement windows against the floodwaters.

The height “49 feet” became a mantra, as volunteers worked for weeks sandbagging and building to match that height.

Some felt that Roberts was sandbagging, because his mastery of the 250s wasn't really showing in practice or the heat.

The sandbagging manager is similarly deceptive. He has mastered the art of seeming harmless and without power, but in reality he carries far more authority and clout than one would be led to believe.

When playing against a wild man, try to be in a position to pick off his bluffs without too many players remaining behind you who can benefit from the action by sandbagging (passing on big hands and waiting for “sport” to whoop up the betting).

Accordingly, we may establish as our principle that the time to sandbag is when you have three of a kind or better, when there are at least five players to act after you, and when your hand is made up of low cards.

“Sandbagged” was used by George Bush in response to the charges of stiffing. “We feel we were sandbagged,” he said, repeating the slang verb used first by his New Hampshire campaign manager. Concurrently, Joe Scott wrote in his newsletter, “The Political Animal,” that Governor Jerry Brown was “sandbagging Kennedy's surge.”

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has allowed himself to be sandbagged by his Tory partners in his otherwise laudable attempt to introduce a fairer electoral system, probably losing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for electoral reform.

[Shane Black:] And keep in mind, I got sandbagged by this one reporter in like 1999 or 2000. He said, "I'm a big fan of your work; I'd love to do a story on you." And after he had interviewed me, he said, "Oh, by the way, I'm going to kind of crunch your words together to make it look like you're talking. I'll sort of take my voice out of it." And it turns out the article is called “Letters from Oblivion” and it was basically about has-beens. But because he was able to put it in my own words it sounded like I was complicit in the article. Like, "As a has-been, here's what I'd like to say about it."

In the past month, President Trump has sideswiped certification of the Iran nuclear deal, sandbagged his own secretary of state’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea, and even provoked the ever-careful Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Bob Corker, to uncork his deepest fears in a series of bombshell interviews.