why do ratings of 1350 play 1150?????

I try for the most part to play better players-meaning higher rated players. I  haveoften read thats how you get better on here.  I mainly play correspondance chess.  Is it a way for some of these players to keep their ratings high  and win totals high? by playing lower rated player ? -and of course they never want to play black lol

Well the default seek range for "online" chess is + or - 300 points.  If you're too lazy to change that (), then you end up playing more people who are rated less than you because there ARE more people rated less than you.  I'm glad I made that clear. 

By default when you start a random correspondence game the range of accepted play is plus or minus 300. So if you just take the default you will wind up playing people 200 points away from you with some frequency. 

but why would a player want to play someone 2oo points or more below them?  I would have no interest in playing someone around 950-200 points below me.

The one reason I like playing people lower rated occassionally is if I want to try out a new opening. Against a lower rated player I get a chance to try something new that I'm not as good at.

Just because someone is lower rated it doesn't mean that the game won't be interesting or that they won't give me problems to try to deal with.

Sadly it also doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to win either...

honest fair answer and that makes sense-----but I do think some people do it to  keep their ratings up  and get easy wins.. I am not saying  is wrong just curious. 

what irritates me is playing someone 300 points lower and they play like a master. I'm like wth!!!

I assume you meant 150-200 points below. Why not? I mostly play correspondence tourneys here and I have tough games with lower rated players all the time. I think I'm over-rated (probably 200 points or so) and I have tough games many times with people with a larger gap than that.

Anyone can give a good game.

I agree with with Long Island and  Martin-I think you can have  tough games with  lower rated players.  I think  there is nothing wrong with  playing  players with lower ratings. I guess what I am driving at, is that I have played against a few higher rated rated players who never play anyone close to their rating.  Rightly or wrongly it seems like from  the outside looking in they are just trying to inflate their ratings and  win totals. i don' know what someone gains from that.  I do agree that most people play lower rated  players for the right reasons.

I am not convinced by the fairly frequently stated idea that playing lower rated players can be used to boost your ratings. Surely, the point of the rating system is that you will be rewarded noticeably less for beating a lower rated player than if you beat someone of the same or higher rating than yourself. However, I do agree that some people seem to only play people they can beat.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I always leave a little room for players as much as 200 points under me to play me.  I feel I have an obligation to do that. Simply put: better players than myself have made, and continue to make, themselves available as opponents, and this has made me a better player.  Goes around, comes around.

 At my level, more of a gap than that would leave me with opponents who often don't understand the system at all, so -200 or so is about my limit.

Thank you for your wonderfully courteous attitude.  Those of us with low ratings benefit so much by playing higher rated players, and it shows great sportsmanship that the higher rated players will accept us as opponenents.

I echo Ellie47's point.  I just recently asked for some charitable individuals rated signficantly higher than me to play an unrated game.  To my unmerited surprise two nice individuals volunteered and I am, I think, a better player because of their sportsmanship!