
Playing Chess


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.
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.
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).

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.
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.
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.