It appears that the fact the game is white the colour vs black the colour is troublesome to you.
Would it not be easier to push for a change of colours (e.g. yellow vs purple, red vs green)?
What about draught/checkers where the player with black pieces (or the player with the darker colour pieces) play first? Does it also need to be modified?
@ dalilmod: so in the beginning, I was just curious where this rule had come from. There's a couple of articles out there online with some unconnected information. I traced the sources to old chess books, to chess journals from the 19th century, personal writings of the main players. I'm a historian so I went into this process as much as I could with an open mind and a dedication to the actual sources. And the pattern that is building is that this rule was adopted during the height of scientific racism, literally months away from the Berlin conference ("Carving of Africa"), by top chess players (led by Steinitz) who were also important voices in the direction of European politics. There are a few writings on politics, culture that are in German that would be great if someone could help me with. But once the pattern was clear, to me this rule was adopted as part of the peak of scientific racism. And we should change it, it would bring more people into the chess world and would make the game a little more visually exciting too.
@ dalilmod - regarding the different colours -- it's a good idea, I'm totally down with that. Since the beginning of the game of chess, the pieces have been made with different materials, all different colours, custom painted ones, and the terms white and black were more for notation, not referring to the actual red/green/marble/brown/grey pieces on the board. and you just pick your colour and choose goes first by doing the chess piece in-the-fist thing. And if the pieces are white and black, either one can go first. Online, there would be two variables when you match (whether you go first, and the colour of your pieces). and then the game continues normally just as before.
this is a relevant thread, btw. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/black-goes-first
and this is a cool thread to visualize this discussion.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/what-if-black-had-the-choice-of-first-move
@Dalilmod - re: checkers/draughts, I don't know much about the game. it's an interesting question, I'll look into it. The wiki page on checkers history has a list of countries and variants, and claims that some start with the darker pieces and others with the lighter pieces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers
You know…I’ll bet the majority of people do not think of chess in racist terms.
Old joke.
A guy goes goes to a psychiatrist.
Doctor: What's the problem?
Patient: I think about sex all the time.
Doctor shows a picture of a square: What do you see?
Patient: Sex
Triangle.
Sex.
Circle.
Sex.
Doctor: You have a dirty mind.
Patient: Me? You're the one with the dirty pictures.
Instead of "white" for the first move we could easily just say "first" and "second"
What kind of retardation is this?
You walk into the middle of the game.
You ask: Who's turn to move is it?
Answer: It's the guy who moves second. That's the guy who's turn it is to move.
Who cares about another new chess variant?
Martin, you mentioned that a rule change could be counter-productive. This is interesting to me. Can you elaborate?
Living history.
I go into a Vietnamese Phở restaurant.
The owner, retired, plays Chinese Chess with the patrons all day, every day. His wife mans the register, his children the tables and the kitchen.
I flipped a coin. I got tails. I'm Blue.
He says: You go first.
I say: Red goes first. That is the rule.
He didn't know. The rule is new to him. Chinese Chess if following Western Chess in standardizing things.
That is the direction.
(Please also read one earlier post in this thread about how racism works in subtle ways, through seemingly harmless stereotypes, microagressions, subconscious connections, etc)
Ok you "sensitive" Princess. I don't where you came from or how a little Pea under a few mattresses can bother you.
I'm about you make you "feel" it.
"For all your life you will feel it."
Forget a little Pea under 10 mattresses. Here is a bowling ball coming straight to your [bleep]
Ghettopoly
To be continued . . .
.
I'll spell it out for you
First video. 10:25
Cream of sum yung gai. [read it phonetically]
This game is deliberately, intentionally, overtly, hyperbolicly, patently (that's a double entendre, they have a patent on the game), unapologetically, unequivocally racist.
It plays into every negative stereotypes of Black people imaginable.
Yet this game sells for about 3 times the price of Monopoly. ~$60 vs. ~ $20
Why? Hmm.
Stereotypes are stereotypes because they are true.
"All myths have a basis in reality." The Encyclopedia of Myths and Magic.
You tell the truth and that is where you begin.
"The truth shall set you free." That's in the Bible, somewhere.
More to the point, this rule (which serves no purpose for the game)
It serves a purpose. It cuts the game in half.
You reach an opening position, 10 moves in (or whatever), you don't have the di-lemma of is it White to move or Black to move.
@blackplaysfirst
Somewhere, in the Mirror Universe,
A twin of you is complaining that Black goes first in Go 圍棋.
And that White should go first.
Except we don't call it White, we call it "Light".
But we also don't mention that it is "Light's" turn. It is the turn of the guy who moved first.
But who moved first? If we don't even refer to the color?
The guy who moved first is . . . the guy who moved first.
Edit: I used up my 5.
In an Alternate Universe, you get all that you wish for.
Shogi. The game of the Shogun.
All pieces are the same color, just pointing at different directions.
And you flip a coin to see who goes first.
Now, is everybody happy?
Something for everyone.
Take Philidor's book from France in the 1740s, Howard Staunton's book in England from the 1840s. There are Russian books and U.S. books from this period and they are all in the same boat til the 1880s. In Berlin, a group of chess masters called the Berlin Pleiades, including Bledow, und der Lasa, and von Bilguer, started to standardize white as always playing first. They founded a magazine, wrote a big chess analysis book, and began to push it overseas. Wilhelm Steinitz also continued this push. In his writings he talks about white humans as naturally superior and therefore deserved to go first. This is why I need a German-speaker to look at some of these documents. :)
I speak German, show me the documents
@wacky_woohoo_pizza_man sent u a request, let's connect
Take Philidor's book from France in the 1740s, Howard Staunton's book in England from the 1840s. There are Russian books and U.S. books from this period and they are all in the same boat til the 1880s. In Berlin, a group of chess masters called the Berlin Pleiades, including Bledow, und der Lasa, and von Bilguer, started to standardize white as always playing first. They founded a magazine, wrote a big chess analysis book, and began to push it overseas. Wilhelm Steinitz also continued this push. In his writings he talks about white humans as naturally superior and therefore deserved to go first. This is why I need a German-speaker to look at some of these documents. :)