volant: sure. when you set up your games, click the number of games you want and then click the box that says "alternate colors".

gambler104: my bad, I didn't explain very well. What I was thinking was a way to put a game/s in waiting game in pairs. So when someone came in and accepted the two players would automatically wind up with two games one of each color. 

volant: I think it is impossible to do now and it would be a nice feature. I see so many times someone posting something like 6 waiting games with each color in some unbalanced game, and some time later there are still 5 black games available but only 1 white game - which mean that the contenders take the white challenges but ignore the black ones.
To get around that, you can offer two-games match, but those are then counted (statistics- and rating-wise) as only one game.

nabla: That was the reason for my request of randomly chosen colors after a waiting game is accepted - you only have one game, and the amount of black/white would be balanced over the long run.

Mr. Shumway: isnt it possible to cancel a game if you havent made too many moves. If so, isnt it possible someone would keep cancelling until they got to play the color they wanted?

SafariGal: there may always be mean persons ;)

SafariGal: If they resign a game and no moves have been made then their BKR wont be effected. If they finish a game and more than 2 moves have been made then they BKR would be effected, so abit of a silly thing to do, if thats what they are doing.

WatfordFC: exactly, there is a work around

SafariGal: Also i really didnt think that the colour you are makes any difference to the outcome of the game, but i stand to be corrected on that one.

WatfordFC:It does affect the outcome if you're playing Maharajah Chess, or Hord Chess.

King Reza: ah right, i didnt know that, because i dont play those games.

 WatfordFC:

King Reza:

WatfordFC: Every game rules page has a little table at the beginning with the percentage of wins for White and Black. For instance, PahTum's percentages are:

white 11354 (54.58 %)
black 6559 (31.53 %)
Draws 2886 (13.87 %)

As you can see, apparently it's better to play with white in this game.

hexkid: ah right, ok, thanks for that. Is that for every type of game

WatfordFC: Every game has different percentages :)



Backgammon: 49.66 vs 50.27%
Ludo: 52.06 vs 47.67%
Five in Line: 57.05 vs 42.06%
Horde Chess: 69.60 vs 26.15%
Maharajah Chess: 29.84 vs 61.98%

So, I'd say colour doesn't matter for Backgammon or Ludo, White has a small advantage in Five in Line, and a big advantage in Horde Chess. Black has a big advantage in Maharajah Chess.

hexkid: ok, i wasnt to sure which type of game safarigal was referring to, but i understand now what you mean.

hexkid: Backgammon is obviously not an advantage since there is a random roll to see who starts anyway.

However Ludo does probably have a slight advantage since it's essentially a race.

grenv: the player who starts first in Ludo is also dependent on the rolls of the dice. According to your own logic, there's "obviously not an advantage" there either ;)

pauloaguia: I thought white had the first roll (I know they can't actually move a piece until a 6 is rolled, but the first attempt is an obvious advantage)

grenv: White has a small advantage since the get to roll first, but it is small. Most games last 40 or more moves so it helps lessen the effect. But it is still an advantage.

grenv: It's still dice dependable anyway

pauloaguia: ? of course ? not sure what that means, but i was just saying the 52% is probably about right - a slight advantage

pauloaguia: Wrong!!
In Backgammon, there is an equal chance for white to go first as there is for black to go first.
In Ludo, white goes first every time, thus giving white a small advantage.

As an example, let's take a very simple case: the first player to get 4 or more points, taking alternate rolls of a single die. In this, we are guaranteed that there will be no more than 7 rolls (If both players continually roll 1's).
From this, it ends up that there are 176 roll outcomes. Of these outcomes, white wins 105 of them (just under 60%). Obviously, Ludo is much more complicated, but to say that it has the same dice-dependent odds as Backgammon is not correct.

jurek: I concur. Any game where one color always moves first gives an advantage to that color. In games where a dice roll determines who goes first, the winner of that roll gets an advantage in the remaining game.

headius: That is correct however since you can not chose which one you will be it makes it so that statistically black and white are equal in games like Backgammon. The degree of advantage diminishes based on the average number of moves it takes to win a game. For example the hpotherical game were you win at 4 points takes very few roles to win so whites advantage is great. Ludo usually takes over 40 moves so whites advantage is small.

mctrivia: true enough, I was just pointing out that after the first dice roll, it's no longer an even game. Omitting that roll the player who "really" rolls first has the advantage. It's also fair to say that in longer-running games the odds even out. A good example is go, where there's no official agreement on what komi should be, but for 99% of games it won't matter if it's off by a point or two after playing 200 moves.

headius: The advantage does not necessarily belong to the first player, although it generally does. In a game like Reversi, I suspect that parity considerations may be important enough that the second player has an advantage.

But the main point is correct: the only way to ensure that a game is perfectly balanced is to have perfect symmetry between the two players at the start of the game. Of the games on this site, only Backgammon and its variants have this property.

Anyway, this being the Feature Requests board, I'd like to say that I wholeheartedly support both volant's and Mr. Shumway's proposals. I've wished for such a feature for a while, but have had to settle for 2-game matches.

KotDB: I also would like this feature. For now I use 3 win matches if I am worried about it. This removes the chance of a tie but the difference between who starts as white is minimalized.

jurek: Oops, my numbers were off a bit; there are actually 279936 possible outcomes (I was lumping "equivalent" rolls like 6,1,1,1,1,1,1 with 6,6,6,6,6,6,6). Of these, 200130 are wins for white (71.5%).

mctrivia: Agreed, as the number of rolls and the freedom of movements go up, the odds tend to even out, but the claim by pauloaguia was that the starting odds for black-vs-white was the same for Backgammon and Ludo.

Mr. Shumway: This would also be nice !