Chessplayers (regularly) turn hairsplitting into a full body contact sport. 
First move-advantage more of a believe than real?
Sort:
zborg wrote:
Chessplayers (regularly) turn hairsplitting into a full body contact sport.
I did it to myself, though. Moses2792796' OP said "five heads in a row" and I changed it to "coming up the same same side five times in a row", hoisting myself with my own petard. But I guess if I had applied it correctly, my original 1/32 is accurate.
Take that, Jamie... 
I still think that first move advantage is only belief. Maybe a lot of you saw Deathmatch om Cess.com TV Caruana against Aveskulov. Despite the large difference in rating Aveskulov won 9 games, 5 of them as Black. I looked at his statistic in FIDE and what I saw? 47% of wins as white and 44% as black (the highest that I ever saw)! But when you will look at stats of GMs from top 10-20 you will see that the most common result is a draw, even with white. I think this is because a lot of GMs think that draw is good result for black and they play for a draw from first move.
Find good quote from Andras Adorjan:
"The overwhelming majority of chess players try to build up a serious repertoire as White, and aim for safety as black. They do not really want to win with the black pieces, or can not imagine how it is possible"
What do you know about statistics? That sample size is way too small. Look in any database with thousands of master games and you will see that white always does slightly better.
By your logic if I were to take a coin and flip 5 heads in a row (not that hard to do), then I should assume that the coin is more likely to come up heads than tails.
Actually, the odds of flipping a coin and having it come up the same side five times in a row is 1/32 (3.125%). Not exactly 50/50.
Excellent points, Estragon and Kingpatzer...
Actually 1/16. The first flip is guaranteed to be "one in a row."
Thanks, Jamie. That doubles the odds to 6.25% (I think).
I was a music major...