Why do some people rated really high play everyone and others do not? I mean everyone should play everyone, i know higher rated people rating will not change but 1 or 2 points, but with that said if we all played everyone i think we all could get better.

the reason lower-rated people dont challenge everyone is, we(I) would get smashed!

Yes, it'd be really interesting

I understand that but that is the only way you will get better is playing people better than you.

I play all, even a low rated player has the right to learn how a better player plays.

its all about  points why should  i get 1 point for winning and loose 15 for loosing

ouch, fvc123 I just saw your game against kwaymark.  Bet he wasnt happy with that!  The thing is, I doubt you learnt anything but bad habits from that game.  It's the sort of mistake that will only really happen when playing simultaneous games.  Coming back to that board, the bishop would be very hard to spot where it was because it's so unusual there, and g7 is obvious.  Plus he was probably distracted by his excellent piece development and control of the centre.  Very funny though (until it happens to me)!

I play all players, from 400 up to 2500 lol.

Dantpatrick i know what your saying but you were the same way to when you started out 1200 just like all of us and we had to play higher rated people to get our rating up so why not do the same for everyone else who is trying to improve.

 

Sstteevveenn Thats true what you said i did get lucky. Ialso agree that i can not learn anything from that but i know from first hand experience that sometimes we over look the obvious.

FVC123 wrote:

you started out 1200 just like all of us and we had to play higher rated people to get our rating up so why not do the same for everyone else who is trying to improve.

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 True. The thing is, this has been discussed before and basically the reason why higher rated players often don't want to play lower rated players are:

1. Some people care about their ratings. As far as rating points go, there is very little incentive to play someone much weaker than yourself.

2. Higher rated people also want to play people better than them; playing someone much weaker than yourself is a great learning experience for the lower rated player, but not much of a learning experience for the higher rated person.

The general consensus seems to be that ideally you should play people within +/- 200 points of your own rating. The reason is: playing people much weaker than yourself is bad because it artificially inflates your ego and develops bad habits over the chessboard; playing people much stronger than yourself crushes your self-confidence and also develops bad habits over the chessboard (you may start playing passively because you start thinking "I need to focus on defence otherwise I'll get destroyed"). The best mix is to mostly play people of your own level (they'll be the most appropriate challenge for you); play some people slightly higher than you (to discover your weaknesses - higher rated opponents will punish your mistakes more severely and consistently); and a few slightly lower than you (to practice winning games that you 'should' win).

FVC123 wrote:

Why do some people rated really high play everyone and others do not? if we all played everyone i think we all could get better.

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 There are nearly 25000 players at chess.com, I don't have time to play them all.

 

I play people lower rated than I am, but I'm not going to waste my time playing someone 500 or more points lower.

the problem with me is when i started on chess.com, i lost every single one of my games , then recently i have gotten a lot better, but I dont know if my rating is effected because of all the games yet.