Best way to increase rank?

Is there any difference between playing against lower, equal and higher players?
Will you learn more or get better by playing against one of those 3 or should you mix them up?

Discuss!

Do you want to be better at playing chess or just increase your rank? If you want to become better, play equal or better players than you (be careful playing against overwhelmingly stronger players that can crush you without effort as you'll probably lose interest in the game).

(here we go)

My recommendation is play a 50-50 mix of higher and lower rated players.

Rank? Increase the board size to 10x8 squares?

Seriously though. If you want to get better, play higher rated opponents. If you want to increase your rating, play those lower than you.

So... is it possible to increase you rank without becomming better? Isn't the ranking system bad then?

Obviously it is better to play higher rated players as that is more challenging and you could realize your blunders because they probably will make you pay for them.

However, playing stronger opponents is useless if that is the only thing you do. Unless you analyze your games to see where you went wrong, how they beat you and learn how to fix or avoid those mistakes, it doesn't matter who you play. You won't really improve much.

A common bit of advice is to play against those 100-200 points better than you.  This will make you really stretch to be competitive, but you won't get blown off the board (hopefully).  Obviously, you cant do this every single game.  If people only played up no one would ever get a game started.  But make sure a fair number of your games are against those with a higher rating, and then it is fine to give some lower ranked people a chance to stretch against you.

play pepole with ratings a lot biger than yours and you will lose most games but the games you win sometimes will raise your rating a lot.

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You are noob

Higher rated (not ranked) players will offer a greater challenge. If you want to improve in chess, you always want to challenge yourself to the maximum.

Blunders and mistakes do happen while playing chess.

If catches win matches in cricket, in chess encashing the mistakes of your opponent win the game. It's quite common to loose the game due to above factors.

Each game is different and a lower ranking opponent may beat you, similarly you may beat a higher ranking opponent.

The best advise :

Commiting common mistakes, say loosing a pawn or a lower piece(bishop/knight) should not bother you, as your opponent also commit such mistakes and you can encash them.

The beauty of playing chess is to have an attacking game, you may win or loose but you will have the satisfaction of playing a good game.

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