I found Haylee's series very helpful long ago. Mainly because she used the extra time to talk that she would have against a weaker opponent to explain the reasoning behind her moves better and give feedback on her opponents moves. She was also playing "honestly" rather than in some contrived way. The sandbagging series will allow for a lot of time for the stronger player and allow them to choose paths for pedagogical reasons, this can be good. They can also just beat up the weaker opponent in a way where the take home message is "If you're playing weaker opponents evenly you can simply outplay them, who'd a thunk it!" without much transferable knowledge being discussed.

I think all authors of sandbagging series are intentionally honest and want to transfer an educational message. I just have my doubts about the narrative and their ability to "unthink" the knowledge and capability built up so far to emulate the average 2k or whatever the target rank is.

An alternative which I'd like to see is Player 1 - willingly and knowingly opponent, vs Player 2 - 2k with enhanced brain of teacher, who will remind the educational message in focus, and then see how much benefit P2 gets out of that.

I wonder, if they looked for opponents in an honest and open manner, would they (the content creators) find them just as easily? Or would they simply end up being sandbagged by somebody who felt that it might be fun to make a joke on them.

But Knotwilg's post now has me wanting a less deceptive way to obtain the same content.

[*] It is only one game, and thus unlikely to impact your server rank.

Hmmmm a lot of food for thought here.

I don't have a good rebuttal for the notion that the weaker player is a victim. However, in the grand scale of injustices, this one does seem low on the list.
[*] It isn't an official tournament game.
[*] It is only one game, and thus unlikely to impact your server rank.
[*] If you play enough online, you will lose lots of games for lots of reasons, and thus won't have your week ruined by one particular game.

I admit this is one of my favorite ways to consumer Go content. And I don't feel mislead into thinking that reading is unimportant, although pure brute force reading is probably where I am weakest, so maybe I have a blind spot here.

But Knotwilg's post now has me wanting a less deceptive way to obtain the same content.

From what I have seem, sandbagging and teaching "basics" is just a farce. It is that player's dan-level reading and positional judgment that wins the games.

"Oh, the weaker player left one defect? I'm just going to read 20 moves ahead and kill this entire group using basics."

"See how you can win by simply playing suboptimal "basic" moves! But look past my advanced positional judgment that enables me to find the best area to play and my superior reading skills that let me know if an area is urgent or not."

In these kind of series I always thought it is not so much the "fault" of the streamers, but a "feature" of the servers they are playing on. The server only allow you to register at i.e. 3d and forces you to fight your way up to your real strength.

So pairings like this must be common on this servers.

Depends. A game against a perceived rival can prove crushing if it ends up being lopsided. Especially if they're already on a losing streak. And that can certainly have emotional ramifications.

To be fair, I do think these tubers read less deeply than they would in even games. But deep reading is just one aspect. There's also move selection, early pruning and like you said positional judgment. And these are hard to unthink.