Do you abort matches to protect your rating

I get a lot of aborted matches in live chess, especially when I accept a game with a player rated much higher than me (>1200).  I am currently 972.  Do people really abort matches with lower rated players to protect their rating.  I don't know that I would care one way or another.  I just enjoy playing.  Regardless of my opponents rating, I find I always learn something.  Maybe I will feel differently if I ever get up in the 1200's.  Any thoughts?

i abort matches because:

1) i'm tired of waiting for white to make the first move

2) i accidently clicked on a match against an opponent i don't want to play against

3) i suddenly have to leave

(i don't give a crap about live ratings - that's where i play to fool around and try out new things)

EDIT: at 972 you are probably learning in every game you play. once you get rated higher, playing against someone lower than 1200 really doesn't teach you anything (except maybe patience).

For me, it's the other way around.  I'm rated around 1450 in Live, and whenever I get and opponent rated 1000 or less, they often abort, probably because they don't want to play someone so high rated.

I'm surprised to hear that it's possible to abort an ongoing game in Live Chess, because that cannot be done in Online chess; you'd have to either resign or time out.

The game is aborted before the first move is made.

Why don't people just use the min and max rating feature when they set their seek? No aborting necessary (which seems like a waste of everyone's time if you're doing it because of rating).

I don't play players below certain ratings, not because I'm trying to protect my rating, I'm trying to protect my time. I really don't want to spend time playing someone who loses in ways that are obvious to me.

I've aborted two games recently. One was because I went to click on a game in the list, and as I was, that game disappeared, and I clicked a different game than I wanted to play. I was looking for a 20-30|0 game, and ended up in a 1|0 game, very very different. :-)

The other game was because I noticed that the guy I was against ONLY played as white. He had several hundred games, and from what I could tell, not one of them was with the black pieces. I simply don't like playing against players like that. 

Please note: I know that people use Live Chess to mess around and try new things, and sometimes you may want to try a specific opening as white, for example. This is fine, but when you play that many games, and NEVER play on the other side of the board, I'm not interested in playing you, thats all.

I find that some players will abort after my first move/reply. I always wondered if this was because they want to practice a particular opening (i.e. if my move was not from the line they were practicing, they aborted).

Does the min-max seek thing really work?  It limited the kinds of seeks I saw, but my seeks seemed open to everyone no matter what I did.  Maybe it's changed since then ?

It does work. I've usually limited my seeks to my desired scope and never had to think twice about it. It works.

I use the min max thing so I wasn't sure how this could even be a topic...

I abort matches only if it takes a really long time for the opening move to happen. Maybe someone left a seek on and went for coffee, I don't know. If someone aborts on me, I usually block them for a while just to avoid being matched against him instantly afterwards. They probably had their reasons for aborting so there's no sense in bumping into eachother many times in a row.

I never abort because of rating difference. The rating options are there to narrow down the field to the scope you want to play.

 It can be done in online chess; it's been done to me.  I also just saw it done to someone else.  In both cases it was before the first move was made.

A match should be aborted if and only if both people agree to it.

I try to play stronger player so a loss does not really effect ones rating all that much and victory give more points- plus you learn a lot more from stronger opponents- beating a much weaker play who blunders the game away does nothing to help me become a better player. If another player aborts a match I hope it is for reason other than protect rating-

Personally I don't care if I have 1200 or the rating I have now or higher.

rating really doesn't mean anything to me. I play against anybody rated or unrated.

I don't understand why people chase rating like it was the holy grail.

my view on this is : if you are getting better - rating will come slowly but surely.

if you give a black belt karate man a yellow belt on he isn't going to fight worse. he is still a black belt.

Yup, all the time.  Doesn't everybody?

Hey! why does everybody around here refer to a game as a match, anyway?  Isn't a match a series of games?

Bobby, sorry to say, but this world is pretty competitive, and I'm not just talking about the chess world. Everybody wants to be the best. Chess is a game of wits and strategy and a lot of people, sometimes myself included, like to feel like they always know something more than another person. Bobby Fischer said he wanted to crush his opponent's ego when he played. There's always someone who knows more, and that, in turn, makes someone else wanting to know more and so on. So rating plays a big part in it. People judge by numbers, sad to say but true  :(

2DecadePlayer, believe me I want to be the best but a number doesn't really make me the best. I am only the best if I can win persistently.

I still believe if I get better I will almost automatically get a higher rating without thinking about it: A rating that isn't just a number but until that point my rating will go up and down.

People have always judged, and will always judge by status, rank, etc. But that only goes so far, there are times when that one must prove his strength through matches, combat, etc. and that is where the real player shines through, I suppose you could say.