Is it possible to raise your ELO by playing low rated players?

OK so this has been a gripe of someone I know for a while and I'd like to put this issue to rest for good.

A friend of mine insists that some high rated players on this site acheived their ELO's by playing many, many players that are well below their strength. For example, can a 2000 player constantly playing 1200-1700 rated players increase their ELO to 2100, 2200 or more?

Thanks in advance for your help.

well at one point, you gain 0 rating points. If I play a 1200, I cannot gain any rating points. 1700, yes, you could increase it to 2100 maybe

Thanks. Would the same principle apply if we took all the numbers back three or four hundred ELO points?

What's the point in playing people constantly far below you level! You aren't getting any better. That's like a high school basketball player always playing a 5th grader in basketball. He should win everytime. Now this HS player plays Lebron James...not going do him much good. At least if he was always playing good college players he could learn something to play Lebron but he would still lose just not as bad!

Look, I'm not trying to artificially raise my ELO. I agree that is pointless and for fools. This is about putting to rest a myth my friend believes in. I want to know IF it is possible, not HOW It is possible.

No it is not possible because the rating adjustment reflects the odds and chances of winning.

Sounds like their just inflating their rating and not being honest.......

If you were a boxer would you spar with people you could beat up easily and kick their ass what's the point? you hit the guy with 1 2 3 punches and down he goes hollering or would you spar with other boxers who can really punch back and defend well and give as much as you can dish out.

It's the same in Chess.

Thank you very much Benedictine. Would you or anyone else be so kind as to expound upon this??

Just on phone do can't at length and don't know the maths off hand...but basically a high rated player could gain many wins but only pick up one or two points, whereas one draw or loss would send him right back to square one. He might win 10 games on the trot then lose one and go back to the start.

If you play people rated 300 points below your own rating, you will suffer occasional defeat that will really hurt your rating.

For more information visit:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/livechess/what-do-you-think-of-people-who-inflate-their-rating-by-playing-only-patzers

I play friends that are rated lower than me pretty often.  It inflates the win/loss stats but it does not seem to adjust the rating much.  

Actually, if I were to play enough random lower rated opponents on here, I would probably lose  points over time just through running into computer abuse here and there.

I strive to always raise my avg. opponent rating.it might not do much about my rating but my playing strength will go up.I've played opponents with the same rating but with vastly different playing strengths.the difference between these people was their avg. opponent's rating.

That's either coincidence or imagination.

Edit: Note that the average opponent's rating is calculated over the last 90 days only, which makes it quite meaningless for players who don't play very much.

The other thing to remember is that, if someone does try to raise their rating by playing low rated players, they'll ocassionally lose to them which will destroy at once all the little gains they made by winning the other games.

It depends on the rating system. That's probably true on this website because I don't think there's an expectancy cut-off. However, it doesn't hold up with FIDE ratings, because they have a cut-off (a minimum amount of credit which is gained for winning, it's somewhere between 0.5 and 1 point).

So in theory it would be possible to inflate your FIDE rating in this way, but... 1) It would take a very long time, 2) One slip-up and you'd be back to square one, and 3) Get a life

I didn't know that FIDE has something like that, but on chess.com I already won rated games getting 0 points for the win.

Yes, for a while, look at sebleb, his real rating that was estimated in my forum "what is seblebs real rating" is 1300 but his chess.com rating is 1400

1) No. Sure you'll win a lot of games but as predicted by Elo spread and statistics you will lose some here and there and when you do you lose most of your hard earned points of your countless won games in one go. Keeping your rating about where it should be and that's the nice thing about Elo.

2) It's psychologically "easy" for a significantly lower rated person to play against you. The pressure to perform is on you likely making your results even worse than predicted.

3) Even if it did somehow raise your Elo playing significantly lower rated people is a sure way to get stuck in your chess development. You'll be playing the same "type" of sloppy chess over and over, you have no need to improve and the flaws in your play remain hidden.
Interacting with, learning from and playing with significantly stronger players than you is a sure way to improve. You are suddenly forced to play very precise. They'll instantly point out your flaws and there will be big lessons to learn from each game.