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

chessdex wrote:

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

If a rating difference is bigger than 400 ELO points your expected score is 0.92 so the answer is YES. If you constantly played 1000-rated players your ELO would rise slowly but surely.

But then, Ithink, if you reached 2500 Fide would order you to play a strong tournament to prove that your are good enough for your rating.

Fixed that for you.

No he wouldn't. He's human, he's going to lose some games.

So, Sebleb is the highest rated player on chess.com?

I am getting sick of the “ gaining points” ! What is wrong to play with people lower rated? Just for fun, because you like chess and you hope your lower rated “friends” learn!!!

PS. I suppose nobody will unswer this question. 🙁

You could set "custom game" to a tight window  say 50 points. You'd only get opponents slighty higher or lower, +/- 50 points from your current rating.

Read playing strength in the following article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Acers

Also, High rank possibly via manipulation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bloodgood

look. you can easily do that. play a lower rated player. but you will eventually go back to your normal rating lateron if you play with other people. anyways what u are doing is just cheating

Yes, but I still think that playing with a lower-rating person only helps to raise your rating, which is complete nonsense. After your rating reaches 3000, you will become a grandmaster and you will probably lose all the games with other grandmasters and your rating will become lower and lower. In my opinion, improving your mind is better than improving your rating. And since you are a human, you do have to lose some games, right? Even GM Magzy (A funny name for Magnus Carlsen) does that!

I'll answer your question Mirjana. There is nothing wrong with playing lower rated friends and helping them improve. We should all be helping each other get better and take pride in our progress. Plenty of people on this site are very happy to play and help each other. Some people though conflate rating and improvement. I just had an opponent time out in a tournament. This means I won both games, one as black the other as white, I gained 40 rating points. i'm not suddenly 40 points better, my opponent timed out from winning positions.

. Seeking help with custom game challenge. How does a 1200 member request a Challenge live Game. 5-0 Time. Seeking to create a game with higher plyr. Need to create a game against 1500 -to 1600 Level player Only

I've played dozens of training games against lower-rated players in my clubs, but they were always unrated games. Not because I was afraid of hurting their ratings... it's because a single draw would cost me a hundred rating points. I don't mind helping them improve, but I don't want to lose a hundred rating points doing it.

The rating system is balanced so that a 200 rating point gap is equivalent to a 3-to-1 chance of winning, and the number of points awarded to each party for a win, draw or loss reflects that disparity. 

So in answer to your question, no, a player cannot consistently gain rating points by playing much weaker players. It will work for a while, but then a single draw or loss will wipe out all the winnings. The higher rated player would need to be lucky every single game. The lower rated player would only need to be lucky ONCE.

If someone only plays opponents rated 500 points lower, he needs to score 96% just to keep his rating. That's not easier than scoring 50% against equally rated opponents.

yeah if like a 2300 plays aganist a 300 the ratings won't grow or decline

No, not really.  I have friend I play who is much lower than I.  When I play and win, I gain 1 or 2 ELO points.  If he were to win, he would gain quite a few.   If you want to advance, you have to play higher rated players.

I've seen a few players who were gaining points that way. Win against someone much lover rated and gain 2 points for example, but then occasionally play people their rating. There was one guy I've beaten, rated around 1 550 or so. His average opponent was around the same as mine, and I was rated around 1 420 at that time. So at the very least, his average opponent was much lower rated than expected for player on that level. 

I don't think that he can gain much because there is a risk to lose a bunch of points, but theoretically someone may benefit slightly from it.

If you play enough games, you are absolutely correct (eventually it is inevitable), but there will be some marginal cases in both directions. Something similar to how house always wins in gambling  , but someone might have a good run and stop (of course most will have bad runs).

That is why I was surprised to see that case where his average opponent was like 1350 or something and he was 1550 and I saw that he played a few of those games but he played some higher rated games as well.

Very good summation Nikki.