On Mar 20, 2:59 pm, "Larry Tapper" wrote:
Taylor,

Thanks, I was keeping an eye peeled for the results of your research.

This one example, though, involving only drawing patterns by world
champions, doesn't shed much light on the general question of alleged
statistical support for some thesis to the effect that Black is OK.
Perhaps the point is that certain players, such as Steinitz and
Alekhine, played for a win with Black more frequently than others?

I have Adorjan's original Black is OK book and I enjoyed reading it.
So I'm curious about what he has to say in this one, though I buy few
chess books these days.

I did read the interview at Chessville, which turned out to be
interesting since Adorjan did most of the talking.

Larry T.

There are a number of oddities in Adorjan's statistics and his
comments thereon. Chief among them is this, on pages 155-156:

"I was a little surprised, that the database contains more White
than BLACK games by the Champs in total ... in the case of Capablanca
and Alekhine [the percentage of games as Black] is below
35%!" (emphasis in original)

Frankly I, in turn, am a little surprised that Adorjan is a little
surprised. He seems unaware that the database surely contains a good
many games from simuls. In particular, Capablanca and Alekhine gave
many, many simuls - it was basically how they made a living. And
traditionally in simuls the grandmaster plays White, explaining the
preponderance of White games by Capa and AA, not to mention Steinitz,
Lasker, Euwe, and Fischer, who also gave many simuls. Such games are
not of much worth in evaluating the objective theoretical prospects of
Black versus White, since the discrepancy in strength between
opponents is usually so great.
Furthermore, there is a strong bias in statistics from simuls: the
games by far most likely to be preserved are the upsets. The GM may,
and usually does, win 90-98% of his games, but generally the only ones
that get recorded anywhere except some patzer's scorebook, and thus
survive to appear in databases decades later, are those where the
World Champion loses or draws against some local yokel. This rather
skews the stats unrealistically in Black's favor.
Adorjan does not even name the database he used. This is rather like
saying "According to a book, so-and-so is true." On top of that, he
seems to have taken no care to separate serious games between strong
equals, from simuls, consultation games, and other inconsequential
noise.
So aside from the fact that Innes completely misunderstood the
meaning of Adorjan's stats, I have great reluctance to grant these
particular stats much significance on the issue of whether "Black is
OK" or not.