Colour split in league matches

[Roger de Coverly]

Not beyond the wit of chessers to fix this alleged colour-home team problem is it?

Doesn't the London League already have some odd/even discrimination? If you are on the one, your opponent can insist on adjournments and on the other completion on the night.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Not beyond the wit of chessers to fix this alleged colour-home team problem is it?

Doesn't the London League already have some odd/even discrimination? If you are on the one, your opponent can insist on adjournments and on the other completion on the night.

Yup. It started off in just division one. Think it spread a bit. Not sure if it’s all divisions.

[Ian Thompson]

Sometimes it feels like that.
So do Metropolitan, Athenaeum, Drunken Knights and possibly some others.
The rest play at a central venue. Thus basing the colour on board 1 on who plays away doesn't work.

Morley College also have their own venue in the London League. And London Deaf. At least I assume they still do. Haven’t played at either for a while.

Not beyond the wit of chessers to fix this alleged colour-home team problem is it? What’s wrong with designating half of Cavendish’s et al’s matches as "away for colour purposes".

The London League has already addressed this for matches played at Golden Lane - "For each match at the Golden Lane Community Centre, the team shown on the left in the fixture list will be deemed to be the home team." (in a rule about who's responsible for ensuring matches start on time).

[Jonathan Bryant]

The London League has already addressed this for matches played at Golden Lane - "For each match at the Golden Lane Community Centre, the team shown on the left in the fixture list will be deemed to be the home team." (in a rule about who's responsible for ensuring matches start on time).

Indeed. Although in my experience that rule is routinely ignored* so I didn’t bother mentioning it.






* to be fair, many clubs are fine. Some, though, are very much not.

[David Williams]

Assuming you play each team twice in a season, even better would be for the away team to play white on all boards. Any individual playing all matches is guaranteed an equal number of whites and blacks, late withdrawals don't mean everyone having to change colours. (Tried for one season hereabouts and abandoned because no-one but me liked it - though no-one really said why they didn't like it.)

I presume they disliked it because it made all the individual matches badly one sided - I'd hate it on those grounds

Obviously that was looked at after the experiment. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure it had surprisingly little effect. You could even claim a positive if there is a disparity in strength between teams. Instead of losing heavily twice, you get absolutely thumped at home, but you travel away with some optimism.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Obviously that was looked at after the experiment. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure it had surprisingly little effect. You could even claim a positive if there is a disparity in strength between teams. Instead of losing heavily twice, you get absolutely thumped at home, but you travel away with some optimism.

I’m not sure I understand this reply. The experiment had little effect, but did very much influence the results (scores, if not win/draw/loss outcomes) of matches? Can’t be both, can it?

[MartinCarpenter]

Getting thumped at home then chances for the away matches is actually quite liable to distort the overall results come the end of the season

I guess one slight counter balance would be that there does definitely tend to be a non trivial home/away effect in chess, even over and above player availability. I guess the travel must have an effect.

[Clive Blackburn]

Getting thumped at home then chances for the away matches is actually quite liable to distort the overall results come the end of the season

I guess one slight counter balance would be that there does definitely tend to be a non trivial home/away effect in chess, even over and above player availability. I guess the travel must have an effect.

Yes, the travel might be tiring but there is also the fact that the home team will have an extra incentive to perform well with members of their own club watching the games.

[David Williams]

Obviously that was looked at after the experiment. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure it had surprisingly little effect. You could even claim a positive if there is a disparity in strength between teams. Instead of losing heavily twice, you get absolutely thumped at home, but you travel away with some optimism.

I’m not sure I understand this reply. The experiment had little effect, but did very much influence the results (scores, if not win/draw/loss outcomes) of matches? Can’t be both, can it?

Sorry, it doesn't quite read the way it should.

When the idea was suggested there was a natural fear that it would make matches lop-sided, but a suggestion to counter that was that, in some pairings, a home thumping and a possible away success might be preferable to two routine defeats. In the event it didn't work out like that. But no-one liked it anyway.

[IM Jack Rudd]

If you want to work out the probabilities of various colour splits for yourselves, look up the Binomial Distribution. The parameters you want are n = number of games or tournaments (dependin on what you're working out), p = 0.5.

[Jon Mahony]

I have always hated the colours to be decided on a coin toss, because A. you don’t know in advance which colour you are going to be, meaning no time to mentally prepare what you are going to do.

And B. I have always been one of the unlucky ones - I went through a Yorkshire League season once, getting something like 2 whites in all the 12 or whatever games played - this was made worse by my mate, who plays the board below me, and who consequently got white every time I didn’t - He doesn’t take league chess very seriously, and blitzes out in 10 minutes flat, quite often loosing and wasting the white bits I could have had

As Martin says, the Yorkshire League has adapted to an away team has white on odds system, which I infernally prefer - I know a week in advance what colour I’m going to play, and roughly who.

The Leeds League recently switched to the away team having all white (from the home team all having white) another change I approve of - in the past you got a lot of people refusing to play away games, now there is more incentive to travel, or they will have black all season. In Leeds each team plays each other twice, so in my opinion this is the fairest system of all.

Bradford is still trailing behind with that coin toss, though I am hopeful of change along with having the 2nd and 3rd division ECF graded. To be fair though, I have had my fair share of white this season.

[Joey Stewart]

I just dont see the need for coin flips - if,as they say, it eventually evens out to a 50:50 split then why not just make it that way in the first place and have fixed home and away colours.
Since we are not immortal beings, most people playing only a few hundred games during a lifetime, the statistics do not work out in the way they should when you tend towards infinity and unfair numbers of blacks can and do happen to a lot of people over their chess career.

[Nick Grey]

I'm about 85% on coin flips this season at chess matches. I cannot see what is wrong with tossing a coin - plenty of starts to contests that have it.
Sorry but if any other way plenty of players like to play home & not away. Even seen it in a note for why a team is not playing in a particular league.

Then again there are certain other places I want to visit to watch a sporting match.

Cannot argue with pairing rules in tourneys.

[Jon Mahony]

I think that’s why Leeds changed it so the home team gets black - very good idea. I never skipped away games personally, but it was a bit miserable getting 2 busses to certain away matches, knowing you were going for a long slug as black, probably missing the last bus back, and forking out for a taxi home.

Having white is a guaranteed incentive to travel, plus anyone who says I only want to play home games, you can say fine, but you’ve got black all season.

Sadly there will always be the odd selfish member who will refuse to travel to certain venues, or refuse to play certain teams, if they believe they are too weak and the risk of damage to their grade is too high - the joys of league chess!