My Strange County Chess Problem

[Joey Stewart]

Hello there. I have an unusual problem which has been happening in my county games ever since I started playing - I always get black!

It has become more then just a little joke now after 5 years of playing, and I even organise the team around this strange phenomenom (putting the stronger white players on the boards opposite numbered to myself) as I have only had one or two whites and they were both when I had to bring in substitutes at the last minute and move myself off the intended board.

Does anybody else have such unusual occourances?

[John Philpott]

When I started as a County captain in 1996, I managed to lose the toss in my first eight matches. My regular board one was unimpressed, although he did get a White in one match when I played him on board two. The sequence was only broken in the final when Lancashire were not represented at toss-up time and I won the toss by default.

[Matthew Turner]

My first five games in the European Club Cup were all with Black. The format of the event kept changing, but I believe I worked out this was a 1 in 128 chance.

[Matthew Turner]

Just taken another look and in fact my first 6 games were with Black, so that would take it to 1 in 256. However, I think I might have had some choice about which board I played on in the sixth match. I obviously choose board 2 to get an easy pairing because my opponent only seems to have been rated 2702.

[Richard Bates]

My first 8 games of this season, across club, county and tournament chess were with white. Has saved the season from being a complete train wreck to date considering a usual 6pt+ bias in strength towards the white pieces!

[Jonathan Bryant]

Yesterday at the Surrey-Middlesex match one of my county colleagues mentioned his run of playing Black in Surrey games.

A few years ago I had something like 13 or 14 club games in a row where all but one of them I had Black. The game I had White I won by default because my oppononent didn't turn up. In the middle of that run I played in a rapidplay event and got 4 blacks and 2 whites.

I',m getting loads of Whites this season though ... and in one of my relatively few Blacks my opponent began 1. e3 so I suppose it evens out over a life time

[Jonathan Rogers]

Events conspired against Matthew in the European qualifying group in senec. He played Black in round one and would normally have played a White in round two, but the team received a bye instead, because (as always, except when a qualifying group was played in England) one hardly ever saw all eight teams appear for these events. Then in the third round we played the other team who had received the bye (in round one) and who had played their sole match with the same colours with which we had played - so it was down to the toss of a coin (in our absence!) and we had Black on one again.

Generally though

a) where they have the choice - i.e when colours are not determined by toss of a coin - captains often give themselves too many Blacks, including myself. Absurdly. I do much better with White and had an unbeaten run between March 1999 (when I lost to Peter Sowray) and May 2002 (Peter Sowray again!) but have so often reasoned "oh well, I am only due to play so-and-so, I can probably beat him with Black too. Person x (also on my team) might struggle to do that with his repertoire. I'll correct it later in the season" and so on

b) I am no statistician but I suspect that most of us have stories of absurd colour sequences at team events. Nunn once played 6/6 Blacks for England!

[Neill Cooper]

My first five games in the European Club Cup were all with Black. The format of the event kept changing, but I believe I worked out this was a 1 in 128 chance.

Actually 1 in 32 (2^5). And a similar chance of five white in a row (equally notable)
With 1000s of chess players such occurrences are bound to happen!

Similar statistics show that it is highly likely that there will be an 'upset' in round 3 of the FA cup.

[Mick Norris]

Hello there. I have an unusual problem which has been happening in my county games ever since I started playing - I always get black!

It has become more then just a little joke now after 5 years of playing, and I even organise the team around this strange phenomenom (putting the stronger white players on the boards opposite numbered to myself) as I have only had one or two whites and they were both when I had to bring in substitutes at the last minute and move myself off the intended board.

Does anybody else have such unusual occourances?

I think one of our U150 players had about 20 successive blacks, but memory dims - of course, every time he got called up as reserve for our Open team, he got white

[Matthew Turner]

Neill,
Believe it or not, I was able to work out 2^5 myself. The probability of me having five Blacks in a row was higher than this because it relied on me facing other players who had also played Black in previous rounds.

[Neill Cooper]

Matthew - apologies, it was just that 128 being a power of 2 made me think the calculation was simple.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I am no statistician but I suspect that most of us have stories of absurd colour sequences at team events.

I'm sure that's true ... and I suspect we're probably (on the whole) predisposed to remember the runs where we get Black a lot compared to when we get White several times in a row.

As Neil says, with 1000s of chessers playing 1000s of games runs like these are bound to crop up. I'm reminded of the poker memoire I once read when the author writes about being dealt pocket aces six hands in a row. You spend your life playing cards you see stuff like that sooner or later.

[Joey Stewart]

That would be pretty cool although, like poker, having an early advantage in chess does not prevent an opponent from getting lucky and skanking an undeserved win later on...

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Joey.

Is this flips of the coin that is doing it or do you know
the board colours before hand? (I saw someone mention the toss).

The Edinburgh League has the home team White on boards 1, 3 and 5.

Which is OK unless you have 2 nutters in the team I once captained
who always wanted Black and explaining to other TC's why my team
was listed out of grade sequence because of these two often raised
the "Chandler you are at" eyebrows.

Wonder if one day the grading system will ever take into consideration
giving extra grading points for winning or drawing with Black.

Statistics do indicate White has a plus score and winning with Black,
especially at the top, is quite an acheivement these days.

It might make for more fighting chess, perhaps fewer draws and it may
solve Joey's problem as the grade hungry guys will be clammering for Blacks.

[Alex Holowczak]

Hi Joey.

Is this flips of the coin that is doing it or do you know
the board colours before hand? (I saw someone mention the toss).

In county chess, the two captains start before the game starts (at least, they do in the MCCU, I can't think why another union would do differently). Whoever wins the toss can choose white on even or odd boards. Given the frailties of team selection, you probably won't be playing on the same board from one match to the next. But despite a probable change from an even board to an odd board, he always ended up getting the same colour.