Optimal opponent range

Hello everybody,

I was wondering whether there is an optimal range for opponents when playing Live Chess ?

What I mean is that by default, the system is set to -200 / +200. This means we play opponents above and below our own rating, and this, equally.

So my question is to know if setting it for example to -50 / +200 could help to increase the rate at which Elo can improve. In short : is there an optimal range ?

I can't make my mind. Seems to be a relatively complex problem ... Does someone has an answer or some thoughts ?

Thanks.

I would like to see more than just opinions but unfortunatly its all i have to offer. I think in chess losing a game is one of the best chances we have to identify and address weaknesses in play. It is certaintly true you will tend to win more against players rated lower than you and lose more against higher rated players suggesting you can learn the most by analyzing games lost against higher rated players than lower rated players simply becuase there will be more loses against higher rated players than the lower rated ones.

However, it seems to me it is easier to identify mistakes made in lost games against lower rated players than it is with higher rated players. If we improve by identifing and eliminating mistakes or less than ideal play then both loses are valuable but i think becuase it should generally be easier to identify mistakes made against lower rated players it is a good idea to keep the settings on default becuase if you are not making any mistakes with lower rated players then your rating and oppenents will increase naturally.

Thanks for this point of view. I got your point. But, by using a chess software doing analysis (or chess.com analysis feature) you can learn by analyzing also the defeats against stronger players.

In fact, after thinking for about the question, I think that all depends on the probability of wining/loosing. So if you play against too strong pklayewrs your probability of wining will be very small , then your rating will constantly collapse toward the minimum. If you play against too weak players, your rating will grow but probably up to a certain point (probably a kind of logarithm function). So maybe the default setting -200/+200 is the best. However, I did put -50/+200 and I'm quite happy with it as long as I can continue to increase my rating. When I will start to loose too many games (ie. when my % of victories of my recent games games will fall below 50%) I will return to the defalut setting.

But all this is still not perfectly clear in my mind :-)