It is a strange dynamic, but if you cancel an account, you don't have as much "available credit". This is important to a point, but you can have too many open accounts. If you have a bunch of open accounts with zero balances, they don't love that either. The thinking is you could run up a huge debt by maxing them all at once. If you don't owe a dime, you have no real recent credit history, and they don't like that either. It is a matter of striking a balance..what that balance is, nobody really knows... As long as your credit is at or above 800, you can get any credit (dependent on your income of course) at the best available rate.