I just wondered what people thought about the advantage a player has as playing white?  Do you think it's a bigger advantage for lower rated players, since they may be less likely to play book openings, almost forcing black to have to react at first.  Whereas with higher rated players, they stay more on line with the book opening, so black can keep up and develop as well.

you get to play the opening that you want to play, unless you play e4 (then you see c5 and e6)

So the French is more popular then the Caro-Kann?

Actually, OTB around my area of the world the Caro-Kann is vastly more popular than the french. All the middle aged dudes down at the club are convinced it equalizes everytime. On the other hand I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm the only dude in the province who plays the french.

The french seems to be more popular at higher levels though...all over the world.

Anyway, the higher up the ratings you go the more of an advantage the white player gets. At the lowest rungs of tournament chess colour makes no real difference.

It's less of a factor for lower players because errors on both sides are going to be far more of a factor than that initial tempo white has and will quickly make it irrelevant.

At higher levels of play, where the game stays quite even well into the middle game the small advantage white has clearly manifests itself in the stats with the top openings resulting in nearly 40% wins for white as opposed to only 30% or so for black: http://www.chess.com/explorer/

I like more playing as black, in 90% of games I play as black, whites first move is e4 or d4. On those 2 moves you have like 15 moves as black, sicilian, caro-kann, french, QG acc, declined, slav, semi-slav, benoni, indian.... For the weaker players, yes, they like more to play as white.

Oh, so if I like white, does that mean I am a weaker player?  ^^

Ha, if that is what you like to think. I said that weaker players like more to play as white, not that if  you like to play white that you are weak.

Issues much :P black's openings are passive-aggressive at best if white plays correctly. Just because they have names doesn't make them any good :) white openings have names too, lol.

oh, and also white always has the advantage, most players just overextend or stop paying attention to their moves at one point or another

No say, plz name openings that are named after black move and ones that are named after white moves. Not the variations, just openings.

lol, are you kidding right now? go look them up....

WOW, so smart, answer my question with same one. Why dont you stop being lazy and prove your point.

Let me help you.

1.e4 King's pawn opening

1...c5 Sicilian defence

1...e6 French defence

1...c6 Caro-Kann defence

1...d5 Scandinavian (centre counter) defence

1...g6 Robatsch (modern) defence

1...Nf6 Alekhine's defence

1...Nc6 KP, Nimzovich defence

feel free to do d4.