Grand-Masters Prefer Black

Has anyone ever heard of any elite-level players (Top 20 in the world in their time period) who preferred playing as Black instead of White in the last 250 years? Or is it so universally recognized that White is better that no top player could ever prefer playing as Black?

If no top player would prefer Black, were there any that at least didn't care (i.e. they would not consider an offer to play White as an advantage or a disadvantage, and considered their own abilities in the two colours to be equal)? Or, once again, does everyone agree that it's better to be White?

Nimzovitch always though of white and black as equal and nothing more.

and most openings named by him are defenses which means he had lot of study for black.

obviously, white's first move gives white an advantage.  How much of an advantage is a matter of opinion, but the fact is that black has an extra objective: first break equal, and THEN fight for an advantage, while white is just trying to secure a significant advantage

Yes, that may be. But if you ever played Chess as a young child, you will know that there would be several young players who would have preferred Black. This is simply because they had good luck with it, or found it easier to counterattack than set up their own strategy, or because they simply fared badly with White. Could this never happen to an elite player, making them prefer Black (if only superstitiously)?

Now I don't remember... it was one of the last few world championship matches where Anand or Kramnik or someone's strategy was to draw with white and win with black, mostly due to the opening preparation, double edge play with strong novelties for black and strong defensive play against his opponent's favorite black setups... it must have been Anand...

Anyway you can't compare amateur level (especially "young children" who favor black) to elite players.  At that level the small small advantage of white (that's negligible for players like you and me) is actually reflected in their results.  It's more than psychology, look at their statistics.  The only exception I could think of was this WC match.

Interesting thought. I don't know if any top 20 GM's prefer black over white, but I know there are instances where someone is well known for playing one defense or opening extremely well, (doesn't Carlsen play a really mean sicilian dragon?) and I have to imagine that in those situations they'd feel more comfortable than normal. Of course, that goes either way, white or black. I feel like at their level it may vary too much from game to game to really just like one or the other. They probably like white in some types of games and like black in others... but what do I know?

Personally, I often feel much more comfortable playing as black, as I've studied and played the pirc and KID much longer as black than I've studied and played the English as white. At OTB tournaments I like playing black, but as orangehonda said, this is just a result of the small white advantage being negligible for players of my skill.

Yes, but if, for whatever reason (e.g. superstition, a wish to do better as Black, etc.), a Grand-Master had studied Black more thoroughly than White throughout his life and had prepared more clearly and fully for Black attacks, then they might have more success as Black than White. The only question, does such a player exist in the 6,000 or so players to have been in the Top 20 in the world at some point in the last 250 years?

This is not actually as obvious as you make it out.  Sure statistics bear out white's advantage, but since most players believe white to have an advantage, this could be psychological, or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If chess were solved, (or if very far thinking computers are involved) it might turn out that BLACK has the advantage.  This isn't very far fetched: consider that black, by waiting until white moves in order to take his turn, always has more information about white's plans than white has about black's.  As soon as white makes a move, especially a pawn move, he has limited his future options and collapsed the number of possible combinations he could play.  Computationally this might make black's job easier.

To illustrate, consider a turn based version of Rock-Paper-Scissors: white selects an opening "move" and then black, seeing white's move, makes a counter-move; then throw a pair of dice: if the result is doubles end the game, on any non-double result, allow white to "move" his stance to any of the remaining 2 stances; black then "countermoves" and the dice are thrown again.  The Move-Countermove continues until doubles are rolled at which point the outcome is determined based on the players' stances.

It's easy to see that Black has a huge advantage in RPS. Whatever "opening" white chooses, black can play an appropriate "countergame".  Black will obviously win 100% of the time.

It's possible that the same situation may exist with chess.  We'll never know unless chess is solved.....

The information theory stuff is interesting, but in the end, in chess both players have all the information all the time (in front of them on the board) except as you say for the one half move of the opponent.  In rock paper scissors each player knows nothing, and knowing the "next move" is 100% of the information needed to win whereas in chess one ply makes up for a very small percentage of knowledge -- hardly equal to other advantages such as control of squares, development, etc that the first move gives much less be greater than it.

Not that it's a poor idea because the r-p-s example, but because in chess it adds so little during a game relative to what both players already know.

To say the statistics of top players scoring better with white could be psychological is nonsense.

I heard that some fischer 960 positions that it can be advantagous to be black.

Teimour Radjabov, I believe, prefers black.

Since he became the second youngest GM at 14, he has defeated Garry Kasparov during his reign when he was only 15---with black pieces. His peak rating was 2761 (#6 in world; jan 2009)

"In 2003, Radjabov defeated Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, and Ruslan Ponomariov with the black pieces. He is probably the first player ever to beat three former and reigning FIDE World Chess Champions with the black pieces in one year."

2003, Linares: "... famously defeated Kasparov with the black pieces, after a blunder, thus becoming the youngest player ever to defeat the world's number one player in tournament play."

that ia actualy the hardest qustion in chess since chess was never cract.

in my opinion playing white is easier and stronger and some times also more comfterball on the eyes and the minde ,BUT wile playing white it is roufer to keep the position aspeshualy if its a lets say 1 min bulet or even 5 min blits. on the other hand once the game is 10-15 min or more being white, i feel, gives a advantege a half a pawn from the start. 

Was that the game Radjabov won the tournament brilliancy prize for?  The one Kasparov was really pissed about him winning because Radjabov didn't outplay Kasparov at all, in fact he was so dead lost he decided to sac a knight in desperation and only after Kasparov blundered did Radjabov end up winning?  The one were Kasparov stole the microphone during the award and ranted for 15+ minutes about how the people who chose the best game prize weren't his friends anymore etc lol.

Whenever I have a tough loss I remember losses like this that even top players have to deal with.

That's the one alright. What's funny is that he didn't take the knight sacrifice...

But it was still a beautiful game :). A chess master is the one who recommended it, and GM Nigel Short had agreed.

I don't know that Korchnoi prefers black, but I just got My Best Games, Vol.2 Games with Black, and in the foreword he says he won no less often with black than with white.

omg, yes, it is rather far fetched to say black could have the advantage if chess was solved.

The "information" argument can in fact apply in some ways to openings like the reversed sicilian and bird, where the extra tempo gives black more information and so might not play exactly what is played the other way (but often the tempo speeds up the plan in a good way too).

But moves like 1 e4 and 1 d4 put the pressure on black, and the "information" that white is trying to crush black in the center isn't very helpful, compared to actually coming up with a good plan for black to counter it. Not that 1 c4 can't fight for an edge either, but e4 and d4 are the best examples.

If chess is "solved", then White would still have the advantage because he could play for a forced mate starting from the first move. There is nothing to counter, because White will just play 1. e4 and declare "Mate in 87".

You're misinterpreting the idea of Black having a perfect "countergame". In one of Pandolfini's books, he introduces the idea of "Dynamic Equilibrium", which states that the beginning of a chess game is neutral; theorically, for every move, there is an equal counter that will produce a draw so that neither side can win without the other first making a mistake. Thus as long as chess is never "solved" the current theory is that Black can, with perfect play, draw every game regardless of what opening move(s) that White chooses.

However, in practical cases, most players have a much easier time being the aggressor vs. having to play perfect defense, which is why a lot of gambits are popular. A lot of people would rather be down a pawn or with slightly inferior position and hurtling toward a doomed endgame as long as they have solid attacking chances that they can win in the middle game if the opposition blunders just one move.

Finally, one has to keep in mind that Black is not the only one who can fight back with countermoves. White often has many counter-countermoves at his disposal. This happens often in games. White plays 1. e4 and 1. d4, hoping for a certain game, and Black plays his opening move of choice to steer the game toward the position he wants. But White can sometimes transpose the position back into what he originally envisioned. It can go back and forth, and it happens all the time.

The game cannot be solved because of the mathematical numbers of the possible moves. White and black both have considerable control in WHAT they play. Hence, billions of variations can occur.

That means that chess can be solved, but you'd need powerful computers and some way to choose the best moves in all variations since you can't go with a team of super GMs and pick the best moves for all the variations.

Even in the solved game, I don't think it would make black any worse off. I think with a fully solved game, the computer would play just as good with black as with white.

The question is, if chess is solved, can the same computer, play itself with white and beat black ?

Solving chess has nothing to do with computing power or calculating moves/variations (well sure you'd need that to some extent) but solving chess happens when they have all possible positions stored, in such an event the "computer" (i.e. storage device) wouldn't play chess, it'd be like reference cards, it'd just look up the position and give the stored answer.

The problem becomes space to store all the info in... anyway I think it's obvious that a "perfect game" with no mistakes is a draw.  Just look at the tablebases we have today where some positions have a dozen moves that all draw while only a few moves will lose, the real point being the drawing margin in endgames is too large to hope for a decisive perfect game... in my opinion that much is obvious.

Neat Discussion

On a side note checkers was solved after years of computation to be a draw.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/1144079

DJHeilke point about rock paper sissors is a good one about information and game theory.  If information is required to win, white will make some type of delaying move to gain information on blacks strategy.  To counter Black may also play a delaying move, but this can not continue.  So in the event information is required to win game theroy would state make moves that do not commit your strategy but stop the opponet from also making waiting moves.

I think we see this sometimes with Nc3 or the Najordf.

This is why chess is so much fun