White versus Black Percentage of Wins

Hi all, forgive my naivete, but why is white so much more likely to Win.

When I look at the Explore data, White's percentage is almost always much higher than Black. Nearly regardless of action line taken.

Is the King/Queen reversal or the white first move the reason for this disparity?

When Black gets to make his first move, White is already controlling some of the center and putting pressure on Black's pieces--limiting his options somewhat.

 

If played perfectly chess is probably a draw, but there are more pathways that lead to correct play for White. If you've ever heard of the Caltrop coefficient, that is what causes the disparity in W/L percentage. The first move advantage isn't outright lethal for Black, but it is easier for Black to go wrong in the opening and the early midgame. Black has to be more careful to respond to White's initiative, and incorrect play will lead to unsalvageable positions much faster.

I strongly doubt most casino players would look at probabilities before gambling. But if the margin is too obvious, even gamblers might see it, indeed.

On topic, I think the statistical reality of White being better than Black is probably a very very marginal factor compared to the players' strength, how much they slept the other night, etc.

Thanks for the great responses.

What I meant by King/Queen reversal is that they are mirrored instead of being symetric, so wondered if that was significant.

Googled a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

Do you think there are a lot of players here continually starting game in order to get white?

Huh ?

If this seems an advantadge to you, just play the game by watching the board in a mirror when being Black... The pieces' movement is unaffected.

This is the strating position, right ? What do you mean by 'mirrored' instead of 'symmetric' ?

EDIT : oh, I guess I got it. You probably mean that White's advantadge would be smaller (or not) if each king was facing a queen, and the reverse, adapting the castling rules.

I believe it would be bigger due to a higher tendancy of opposite castling thus sharp play, but there is no way to be sure by such metaphysical arguments.

Of course, one could ask the question by permutating knights and bishops, or other tricks like that...

Yes, exactly my point. There is an advantadge, but we cannot "feel" it when we play, us mortals <2000.

Irontiger, yes, that was it, if the kings faced the queens then it would be a 180 rotation symmetry versus a mirror symmetry. I think this was probably introduced to make gameplay more interesting as the 180 symmetry would result in copying all your opponents moves and be boring.

I read in the wiki article that having white on average is worth 35 ELO. That's fairly significant no matter what level you are at since near equal players are usually paired.

1st paragraph : try it once, lose all your games, and understand why you cannot just copy the moves, in either variant.

2nd paragraph : that is pretty much insignificant. 100 Elo means a 15% imbalance, so 35 Elo is very roughly 5% (that's not linear, but let's say it is). This means you have to play 20 games before winning one more. You find this significant ? Compared to other factors such as the sleep, etc. ? Not me.

When I was below 1000 my win percentage with white was astronomical vs black. Now at 1200 the difference is still there, but not as strong.

There's got to be some sorta archive of all the chess games ever recorded in history that has the results of an accurate percentage of "correct play" only.

The reason black loses more is that black usually tries to use the wrong strategy.

Check my stats. I'm killing it on black. I've put together a few short free videos on YouTube showing best response to D4 and E4 openings. Read my book free on Kindle for detailed info on the black strategy, the thinking, the tactics, and the comparisons with ancient battles where controlling the center did not leave to victory.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Meets-Black-Strategy-ebook/dp/B01MQCCNK3/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=the+art+war+meets+the+black+strategy&qid=1578841872&sr=8-3#mediaMatrix_secondary_view_div_1580047532456

Does anyone know when this feature was added to Chess.com?

I'm assuming around 2010, but the first post from this thread is 2013.

First move advantage not real

@Vincentdegruy there are people way beyond our ratings that disagree that whites advantage is not real. Technically, because you can’t just reply any move to Whites first move, then white has a slight initiative out the gate. At the higher levels, if one player knows you are having trouble with a certain defense from recent games, they might guide the opening play in that direction to exploit your weaknesses. You could do that from the black side, but not if the goal is to exploit a queens pawn game line, and they push the kings pawn, you can’t twist it into a queens pawn game from the black side- that was whites call, and they played kings pawn. In that sense, you are at the mercy of whites first move, and the whole list of possibilities that existed before whites first move is immediately pared down to a much smaller list when they make the first move, from there it goes.

Very interesting topic.

Not long ago I checked my stats white losses % vs black losses %, and it shows a surprisingly high discrepancy:

52% wins - 43% loss when I play white, and 39% wins - 59% losses when I play black. It retained my attention since I have read that usually white wins around 55% more often, So, on the white side, I am OK, but there is a real problem on the black side. I started to think about how to increase my win % on the black side, which lead me to find this thread. 

First I have to think the main reason to explain my poor perfortmance on black side is the fact that before subscribing here and play with real people, I always played against bots, using only white side: lack of experience with black side is thus likely the main culprit.  An interesting fact, I  always experience a certain unease when I start a game using blacks. Now that someone here talked about a non perfectly symmetrical board game (king & queen reversed), I must conclude this is the cause of my disorientation, which only happens during the opening. But I guess damage is already made in the game... Now , playing blacks, I suppose that I have to consider a little bit more (not too much) of a defensive/protective/anticipating strategy that an offensive one, especially in the beginning of th egame, since the opponent ''makes a move before mine'', at least during the beginning. I am optimistic that I can improve more than 35 ELO points my rating with this. I'll come back to this post to see if improvement occurred. Thanks to all!