Depends on what you are looking for.
If you want to win everytime, always seek lower rated opponents.
If you want to be challenged and learn a lot, always seek higher rated opponents.
Most people choose opponents around the same strength as themselves to strike a balence between the joy of winning and the joy of learning.
Have a look at my blog: How to Tell Whether someone is Over or Under-graded. I think it is a reasonably definitive approach to this problem.
Click on madpawn, then go to my blog OR at least that's what I understand. Please leave a note!
By the way csharpe thanks for the advice and the fact that you left a note!
59% win 35 % loss and 6 % draws with a little over a third of my losses on timeouts(called in to work and couldn't get to a comp lost a big chunk of games).
I think it says that I win a large percentage of my games on here. nothing more nothing less.
70%:26%:4% is my win, lose, draw ratio. I'm about 300 points higher than my "Opponent's Average Rating", but that average has been going up since I got here from 1200's to 1414 right now. Well, I think that win, lose, draw ration says that I can play pretty good if I play people rated around 1500-1700 most, but then it really dips down as I go any higher than that. I'm working on getting that higher so I've been playing some more difficult players even more so than before. What does that say about me? I want to increase my rating ever so slightly, but by playing players that are slightly harder each time over the course of a couple of years. : )
ADK
What is your ratio of wins to losses and what do you think it says about you as a player? What is the relationship of your rating to your average opponent rating, and what does that say about you as a player? It seems to me that if your ratio is about 50/50 and your rating is steadily increasing, then it's about right. What do you think?