White's advantage is an important thing to know because it affects how you play the opening. White can often "waste" a tempo in the opening for positional reasons but Black can easily be put in a bad way by the same kind of move.
In well-played games, White's opening goal is to maintain some overall advantage going into the middlegame and Black's goal is to achieve equality.
<Silent Knight 5> I have no reason to suppose that I'm playing a different pool of players when playing white, than the pool I play when playing black... it's probably the same people with the same ratings, over 10,800 games. Not so?
In Blitz chess I have a bigger gap than I expected between White and Black (56.3% white wins vs 52,5% black wins), but at my level I'm not convinced White's advantage is all that great, it is more psychological. Especially for me as I know next to no opening theory so I will very quickly waste a move with some substandard play that renders 1 tempo largely irrelevant. Mind you, I'm equally likely to waste that tempo with Black as with White so maybe the advantage is still there.
In Daily chess I'm pretty much equal. In fact I have 52.5% White wins and 52.7% Black wins and of the rest I draw more, lose less with Black than I do with White.
I play the King's Gambit any time I get an e4-e5 game though so that ought to lower my White win % a bit!
If you play the King's Gambit then it makes sense that you will have a better percentage as black...
I think a lot of people underestimate the value of playing first at lower level. Obviously the small advantage the computer estimation gives you is not enough, but thats not the only part. I think the most important part for lower level chess is that white gets to dictate the opening that will be played (to an extent). Black is much more often forced to dodge the punches as they come and react to the opening that white decides, where as white only has to prepare for a few viable variations to their moves. This can be a massive advantage at lower levels since a player vastly shrinks the openings they have to be play against and can be much more prepared for the mid game.
One move is huge if you are playing into a gambit or some opening that your opponent knows better than you. But I don't think it's enough for a win in more passive openings and it's more of who is the better chess player at that moment in that match. The difference is negligible.
I suppose, that in a strictly theoretical sense it is an advantage, but for all practical intents and purposes it won't be a determining factor for most humans.
Also, there might be a theoretical argument that with perfect play, every (chess) action has an equally powerful reaction available to the other side. White has the first move but is also exposing its intentions with that play. Perhaps with prefect play, going first could be a disadvantage/equal action.
Since chess isn't solved, this is all a moot intellectual exercise, and neither color should be used as an excuse for losing.
I believe that the +0.2 is a "dynamic" equality, meaning that the advantage of first move is greater than the disadvantage of first move. The point is that in chess, it can be disadvantageous to start (zugzwang situations), unlike in some other games (tic tac toe), where it would mean that the starting player has a small advantage and a non-losing strategy.
It could be that Black simply has a forced win from the first move; it is just unproven.
At least for me it's a huge advantage. My win rate drastically increases with white piece.
#71
The stronger the players, the less significant the first move advantage.
Black is OK.
#71
The stronger the players, the less significant the first move advantage.
Black is OK.
Sorry, I believe you have it backwards. The weaker the players, the less significant the first move advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess
#73
Look at this:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf
Figure 2:
1 s/move: 8820 draws, 772 white wins, 409 black wins
1 min/move: 979 draws, 18 white wins, 3 black wins
So the relative importance of the first move advantage i.e. the ratio white wins / black wins increases with more time i.e. more strength.
The absolute importance of the first move advantage i.e. the ratio white wins / total games decreases with more time i.e. more strength.
That's AlphaZero analysis though, not human analysis.
Also, @tygxc is talking first-move advantage as a function of time control. I think most of us are talking first-move advantage as a function of player strength (i.e., rating). Apples and oranges...
DUDE, I spend my lifetime searching for advantages as white and equalizing as black
honestly its kind of sad that we know one day chess would be solving this and showing that white would always remain superior over black and that the advantage will be there
#75
For humans it is the same: the stronger the players the smaller the absolute white advantage,
but the larger the relative white advantage
#76
More time = more player strength
#78
Chess is a draw, the white advantage is not enough to win.
You can't go by W/L %, you have to look at predicted score based on elo difference.