Do You Generally Play Lower-Rated Players

I've noticed that the vast majority of players' stats indicate that their average opponents are rated lower than themselves. In contrast to this, my average opponent rating is just four points below the highest rating I've achieved because I tend to play opponents who are better than me (at least in terms of their rating).

I'm writing this post to get a sampling of people's opinions as to why you generally play weaker opponents. It seems to me one of the best ways to get better at chess is to generally play better opponents, rather than weaker opponents in order to pad your rating.

What do you think?

It really isn't my fault that my default searches returns players within 300 rating points, and it happens that their rating is lower than mine.

In Live Chess, I play mostly stronger opponents, but in Online chess, the majority of my games are tournaments or team matches, which make it hard to control the ratings of the people I play.

Yes, because I am lower-rated myself.

I agree, depends on how high your rating is. I, myself, tend to play lower rated players because, I am of a lower rating.  In contrast, I always set the option for a higher rated player to accept the open seek.  You can never tell who will accept, or if their rating will be higher or lower.

I just play whoever accepts my open seek.

If I consistently play people with close to equal ratings as my own, shouldn't my average opponent rating be below my rating if I'm always improving?

It depends on how alert I feel. If I am tired, which is usually the case after a full day of teaching, I set my Live Chess seek to -200/+50. On the weekends, I like to set it to -100/+100.

I'm not sure if it would be any fun to set it to -200/+200. It feels like a punch in the gut when facing players much stronger than me. Each move they play hurts! The upside to playing +200 guys is that you only lose about 4 rating points, which is nothing.

A few times, I have played guys rated between 1400-2000 USCF at my local chess club - OTB. They always see my first mistake - MY FIRST MISTAKE - and then blow me right off the board. They play against me when there is no one else to play.

Besides me, there are just a few adults rated between 800-1200 USCF in town, so, at the moment the internet is the best place for me to experience competitive games that are fun and challenging for both sides. 

I would be perfectly happy to play against kids who play in scholastic clubs, but we don't have any in the desert. About two years ago, I had some good competitive games against a few of my band and orchestra students, but now I am much too strong. It was the tactics training that did it, and my older students have noticed the significant improvement in my play. I don't get beat anymore, which I miss. I liked seeing the satisfied smiles on their faces, beating Mr. Heflin. 

I guess that I am a tweener (in between skill levels). How long will it take for me to hit a minimum of 1400 USCF, so I can have more fun at my chess club?  It's not like I am 21 and have all the time in the world. Those guys at the club are way too strong!

I think it's because the average opponent rating includes all opponents one has ever played ... including when one's own rating was lower. I tend to play slightly stronger opponents, still my average opponent rating is lower than mine most of the time (not at the moment, because I had a bad losing streak in blitz and dropped 100 rating points), because all the 800-1000 opponents I played when this was my rating are still included.

Sometimes I play against grandmasters when I'm feeling suicidal.

I pat myself on the back if I can last for 24 moves total.

 Same here.

I'm in it for the glory, not the power! 

Some great responses, folks. Thanks so much. I play almost exclusively 5-minute or 3-minute blitz games online myself, and I am convinced I actually play worse when I play against weaker players. In contrast, I think my skill goes up when I play better players.

Usually I set my seek to 5-minute games and only accept players rated 1500 or higher, and I don't put a cap on how high (I'm currently rated just below 1500).

Like Musikamole says above, you gain more points when beating higher-rated players and you lose less points when you lose. Furthermore, a good many of the players in the 1500-1700 have inflated ratings because they play weaker players all the time to pad their rating.

So even though someone is rated 1580, if all they're playing is 1300-rated players to pump their rating up, their true skill rating is much lower than 1580. Thus, I see an opportunity to score more points in this scenario.

Add to that, if you're putting out a seek that is higher than your current rating, chances are you're going to get opponents that habitually prowl for lower-rated players. And as such, you'll have the opportunity for easy wins against higher-rated opponents. I.e., more points for you.

I don't know. I just don't see anything good that comes from playing weaker opponents 80-90% of the time.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

You're welcome.

Actually, the way the rating system works is that you get very little points for beating someone way below your own rating. For instance, someone with a rating of around 1300 challenged me a week back and I checked what I'd get for a victory: exactly 0 rating points. So I could play and beat him for 1000 games and still wouldn't improve. (I didn't accept the challenge.)

Rating points start to come in when your opponent is "only" ~500 points below your rating, so if you'd want to inflate your rating, you should start playing opponents in that skill area. Then again, ratings function on the statistical probability of one player's victory over the other. The way it should work is that someone who is about 500 points below you will beat you maybe twice in a hundred games more or less by chance, and if you get one point for each of the 98 games you have won against him, you'd lose 49 points for each of the two games you have lost, giving you a total rating change of exactly zero. Of course, this entails the necessity of a near-infinite amount of games played - the fewer games have been played, the more likely one's rating is to fluctuate. With a sufficient amount of games, the rating should eventually converge to the "correct" result.

I agree with the OP that playing higher rated players is a way to improve. It usually helps if  they're not too higher rated. Sometimes Masters slice me up so fast I don't know what happened. My average opponent rating is 100 points below mine because I don't select most of my opponents. They come from team matches, tournaments and answereing my open seeks. I always latch onto a higher rated seek when I can.

These are nice points to add, eddiewsox and azuzikuru. I rarely play anyone more than 400 points higher than me. For my rating that would be a player in the 1850-2050 (or higher) range, and there are just very few of these players who would click on a seek from a 1490-rated player.

So to clarify, for general playing purpose I play against opponents rated better than myself but not more than 400 points higher.

What I've done recently is set my seek to opponents above 1500 when I'm currently rated below 1500. And if my rating creeps above 1500, I set my seek to players 1600 and higher.

It's always about challenging yourself to play better players, but not so much better that it is virtually impossible to win.

I imagine the same would go for someone rated 2200. Your sweet spot opponent is someone rated 2250-2500. 

I am not sure where you are getting the stat that most people play people lower rated than themsleves, but I can assure you it is quite impossible.

It is just like saying "Most people are below median intelligence".

I generally play in tournaments on line with players comparable to my own rating. Occasionally a much lower opponent enters or a player joins and then times out on a number of games. They bring your average opponent rating down. Thus, my ave. opp. rating tends to be slightly lower than my rating.

Every player on chess.com has stats listed like:

This says the player's current rating is 1518. His avg. opponent is 1420, which suggests that he statistically speaking plays opponents rated about 100 points lower than himself.

I rarely see a player who's current rating is below the avg. opponent rating like this (mine):

Well, there is also a percentile listed. So the 50th percentile should be the average rating of the site.