In Live, the only way you can get White by choice is by playing an unrated game. If you play rated, you will get random and it should alternate game to game. There is a link towards the bottom of the section where you start the game that says Rating Options; click that and choose Unrated: White
As to the challenges, you should have a graph on the page with all the open seeks available to you. You can choose to play one of those, if you select it before anyone else does.
thanks very much-- that's very helpful. unfortunately, when I click on Live Chess, the only window that opens for me is one to select how many minutes I would like the game to be. After I select that, it says, "you have issued a challenge", and shortly someone comes on to play me. There is no graph on the page with the open seeks available. And there is no link at the bottom of the page with a Rating's option. perhaps I need to contact "support help". Not sure why none of this is appearing on my page. I've used tons of other features on this site, and they've all worked fine.
but thanks very much for taking the time to answer my question!
in live chess, how can I set the settings so that I am white? also, it automatically issues a challenge from me as soon as I click "play live"-- I don't even have the option of seeing what challenges might have beenoffered to me. in the faq, it mentions something about a "challenges" tab that I can click on. but I can't find that anywhere on my screen. thanks!