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Topic: Who thinks black is better than white
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Hmm...aknightout...hey, buddy, 1. d4 c5 is Sicilian? That's interesting...
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He probably meant 1.e4 c5. Thanks for expanding my concept, aknightout, it is indeed what I meant. However, I feel I play a lot better with White because I am more of an attacker than a defender and I really miss not having the initiative. My stats kind of confirm this: although I have more victories with Black, I also have a lot more defeats and draws with it.
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axedre wrote:
| In Game Theory, Chess is among the "Perfect information" games; Black always has a half-move more information than White! |
But white always has half a move more initiative and it's not clear which of these factors is most significant in any given game.
For example, in the game of Nim there are three piles of tokens. The players take it in turns to choose a pile and remove some number of tokens from it. The person who takes the last token wins. Now, it's easy to see that, if the three piles start out with one token each, the first player wins the game. But it's not hard to see that, if they start out with one, two and three tokens, the second player wins with optimal play.* So, there are games where the first player has a forced win and games where the second player does. In chess, the stats from past games show that the first player has a practical advantage.
aknightout wrote:
| Black can shape the game often more than white. For example, if white plays [1.e4] then black can decide the game will be sicilian with ...c5 or steer it somewhere else. |
That argument makes no sense. Where is black's Sicilian if white plays 1.c4? White can prevent black from playing the Sicilian even before black has played a move. Doesn't that indicate that white is shaping the game more than black?
Dave.
* Here's the proof that the second player can always win in Nim with initial piles of size 1, 2 and 3. Call the players white (moves first) and black. There are two cases for white's first move. Either,
1) he removes the whole of a pile, which leaving two piles of different sizes. Black responds by removing one or two tokens from the larger pile to leave two piles of the same size. Now, black copies white's moves. That is, if white removes one (or two) tokens from one pile, black removes one (or two) from the other. Black removes the last stone, so he wins.
Or,
2) white does not remove the whole of the last pile. In this case, he must leave two piles of the same size. Black removes the whole of the other pile (the one of a different size) and then proceeds to copy moves, winning the game, as above.
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An interesting remark: this is why I believe that, given the two factors, chess should in theory be a balanced game (if we assume a perfect chess-playing machine were to challenge itself, games would always end in a draw).
All in all I think it's just a question of personal attitude towards the game, be it a more offensive or defensive one.
The fact that stats show White has always had a slight advantage might simply mean that, throughout history, chess players have given more importance to initiative, fast development and fierce attacks and have had more success in doing so by playing as White. Historical games seem to back up this hypothesis since open games, gambits, opening traps and so on have been very popular in the past centuries.
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I think that playing White is a slight advantage. Chess is such a complex game that this slight advantage can be very easily lost. That some have statistics that seem to indicate better play with black is likely a simple deviation (like flipping 100 coins will seldom result in 50 heads). Taking casual looks at win/loss/draw records doesn't tell the whole story. One would need to carefully look at the opponents too. Can there be players that are defensive specialists? Of course, but in that case such a player would be foolish to play offensively with White. They would gain a huge advantage by playing a defensive opening. One that can transpose well to suite Black's 'opening'. With such a playing style, they would still have a better record with White generally because of the tempo advantage. If your record is significantly worse with White and you still want to play offensively from the start, perhaps take some time to learn the openings better.
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