always play the board position-not the mind of the other player's (rating)!!
How to beat a weaker opponent?
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3gkarthik wrote:
Now let’s look at this situation from another angle. What does it mean to have a rating of 2200? It shows that performing like a 2200 is your BEST performance, your PEAK performance (otherwise your rating would be higher).
LOL what? Somebody doesn't understand... What do I even call that? Really really basic maths?
I don't think the 2200 should rest on his/her laurels. The 2200 should aim for the most difficult positions and ideas they can cope with. If they give the 2000 an "easy" game (I'd be crushed by a 2000) then they may very well end up in an endgame that is easy for the 2000 to cope with and only get a draw, or actually lose if they make a mistake.
If the game is OTB the players don't necessarily know who they are going to be playing very far in advance.
If it is online Chess, one can nose through all of an opponent's games and see if it looks like they have some specific weaknesses that can be targeted. 
Jun 29, 2016
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#5
3gkarthik wrote:
<snip>
What does it mean to have a rating of 2200? It shows that performing like a 2200 is your BEST performance, your PEAK performance (otherwise your rating would be higher).
</snip>
What? No! A rating of 2200 of course means that 2200 is your average performance.
Jun 29, 2016
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#6
One of my trainers once said, 1400 players make moves of similar strength like 80% of the time but the 1800 players plays better in the critical moments like in a combination
Play the board, not the rating.
Jun 29, 2016
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#8
200 points is not a "significant gap" and I would not "expect to win."
It's common to have performance ratings 2 or 3 hundred points above (and below) your rating.
Also you seem to imply that the best moves are always vigorous moves.
"You start playing “normal” moves (as opposed to the best and the most vigorous moves)."
More bad advice being given.
I don't know, or want to know, the rating of most of my opponents.
I think that if you always try to play the best move you can find given the position, you just can't go wrong. I play with 3 particular people fairly regularly who I pretty much KNOW are several hundred points below my ELO, and I play them exactly the same way as I play the one guy who I've never beaten. To do otherwise would be a disservice to them and myself. Nobody learns from being "coddled" or "going easy on them" - I would not respect the guy who always beats me if I knew he was holding back. I want to see his most brutal and merciless moves against me... so I can learn from them! 
Let's say, we are talking about a situation when you are about 200 rating higher than your opponent. Let’s say you are 2200, and your opponent has a rating of 2000.