Random play makes me go 'thank you, bye'

go joing a guild and gets some gold. dont be all sad cause your loosing.

Actually as a beginner you would want to play as both colors. You'll notice that as you get better, you really won't want to play as a certain color (most likely black). I know this because I used to play only as white, and sooner or later you have to play as black. It's not as much as knowing how to play as black, but your willingness is what matters. Especially at a beginner to intermediate level, black and white should not make too much of a difference. You have to be able to enjoy playing in both positions or else black would stay forever inferior. 

Repetition is nice, but it also is nothing but memorization and you don't need actual games for that. You won't improve in a wider scale that way. Once you get to a higher level and want to see similar openings and practice on those positions is probably when you want repetition. But even then, you want your games to be as different as possible which means you would learn something different from each game. If you get the exact same position it's easy to show that you learnt from your mistakes, but if you get a different position and you locate a similar mistake, that's what really shows improvement. 

sorry - we're doing what is best for the entire community, not what's best for individual people who don't like to play both sides of the game. 

if you want to just play white, i recommend chess master 9000 - it's a great piece of software that won't complain if you make it play black all day long. 

lol

It's silly to think you are going to learn chess and never play with black.

It's also silly for low level players to think that which color they have makes a signifigant difference.

I've run into this a few times teaching kids in the 6-8 year old range, and I've told them "Sorry, you have to be able to play both sides, you don't get to decide".  It's simply not fair to force one player to play black every time because some other player requires white every game.

Over the board, most players will put a pawn in each hand, mix them up, and have their opponent choose a hand.  It's a simple and easy randomizer. 

In tournamnets, the director normally does his best to make sure that all players alternate colors. 

In a multiple-game match between two players, you normally switch colors each game.

Even at the *highest* level, where the first-move advantage matters the most, black still wins sometimes.  Anand just won the World Chess Championship by winning the final game with black.

Is this guy for real?  Almost every game I've ever played color was chosen by flipping a coin or by guessing which hand your opponent is holding the white pawn in. In tournaments half of the time you play white and half black. IMO it's fun trying to erase white's half move advantage.

I'll look it up erik, thank you.

p.s. I won't have any legitimate complaint if you run a poll that shows support for this change by the vast majority of the "entire community".

p.p.s. there's still my other suggestions as well, to allow players to be marked as 'single color players' or to just allow beginners some leeway in color selection. I'm not sure any studies have been made to support the superiority of the 'tournament/club switch-colors-every-match style' over a methodology where some repetition is allowed.

p.p.p.s. how many guys are going to repeat the same argument about tournaments and/or make trollish personal comments? geez?!

I'm on my second month of playing and haven't felt good enough about king's pawn openings in order to move on to explore queen's pawn openings.

I did try the new random white-black method but it just takes me "out of it" for both colors... I'm almost certainly not one of the gifted beginners who can do great with both... I just I just wanted to learn a bit and have fun while I'm at it... a tournament or a serious club student is something different than a gaming website... even if its a serious game like chess.

which is exactly what we did.

"I'm almost certainly not one of the gifted beginners who can do great with both..."

If you can do great with both sides then you aren't a beginner. You have to put up with losing in order to learn, just like everyone else.

I'm probably even newer and more of a beginner than you are.  But you don't even seem to be grasping the basic logic the more experienced players are explaining to you.  You don't have to be good at chess

1.  You are not good enough for it to matter.  You learning openings and playing them over and over is repetition, and you are NOT improving at chess.  You need to develop chess skill, which comes from a thousand messy middlegames and a thousand tactical endgames and a thousand blunders that teach you what not to do.  You learn to be attacking and defensive and dynamic and tactical and fast and slow.  Playing as white over and over and over again to play the King's Gambit (or whatever) 40 times in a row will teach you memorization of one opening, but it's NOT getting you better at chess.

Conclusion:  Play both colors and quit whining.  You're going to improve by playing random colors, and the only thing stopping you is your weird mental block, which is your problem and not anyone else's.  The best players here seem to nearly unanimously agree that playing both colors interspersed will be good for you, and they're the experts and you and I are the beginners.  I'm going to take their word for it, and you should too.

Straighten out the knight, Erik, or else. Just straighten it out.

I've chosen a color if there's a particular opening I'm working on, but I won't miss this feature. If you want a Ruy Lopez you might get a French, for example. However, if you wanted a particular color in a rated game and received the wrong color, couldn't you abort the game and initiate a new seek? Wouldn't you have a roughly even chance of getting the color you want on your second try?

A worthy argument. Thank you.

In relation to a previous comment: its hard to believe that someone who says they are more of a beggienr yet is 200 rating points above me (i.e. probably more talented at this game tha I am) tries to constrain me to a method that is not working for me.

Repeating the initial problem before I reply to the valid concern:

Just as I can't keep switching between Queen's Pawn openings and King's knight openings (and 2-3 others) - it hurts my learning curve when I have to switch. I tried... I gave it an honest try but feel that it really doesn't work for me and I suffer on both colors as a result. I'm not gifted in chess but I found a method that works for me so that I can improve.

As far as deserving ratings points:

These points are to help us know our level of play. If someone deludes himself into thinking that if he ranks 1300 (or whatever) while only playing white then he's an 1300 player on both colors that is his own problem. These are not ATP rankings and no one here is making money off their ranking and hardly anyone makes money anyways other than the site's owners and some gifted professionals.

p.s. what is the motivation to object a poll exactly? Dogmatism?

First off I want to say that I don't mind the change. I think it's stupid, personally. However, it doesn't affect me all that much.

Ok, with that out of the way, it seems like I'm the only person who understands what OP is saying... and I agree with it.

When I want to work on a particular opening, I'll play as white as many games as I can to perfect it. I don't want to patiently wait for each individual opportunity I get to practice it; I want to perfect it comulsively. I have the same ambitions with black and certain defences.

All in all, though, it doesn't matter to me too much as I don't take chess that seriously, anyway.

If you really believe it will help you I will play some unrated games with you as black. If you would like my observations during the games I would be happy to do that as well. This is a real offer. I'm not being sarcastic. 

Good lord, another of those "Unfair! I want White!" threads. People should be given real problems to get all worked up on these forums...