White is Better, Black is Better, YouTube is Confused.

If anyone ever asks me about my hobbies, I usually say “Cycling, Chess and Monogamy”. I’m really good at one of these, fair at another, and I’m a bad chess player.

But ‘bad’ is relative. I played in tournaments. I drew a game with a Life Master in Turlock many (too many) years ago. I finished in a three way tie for first in a B Section Tournament at UC Berkeley., ahead of 95 other players. My rating reached a peak of 1746. Former Record Columnist Mike Fitzgerald also played and he was rated well above that, which always irked me, just as his column did on numerous occasions. But I really miss him in the paper.

Now I play against my phone. There is a chess app that has 12 levels, and on Level 7 I kill it, but on Level 10 I win about 1 in 10 with a couple of draws thrown in.

High quality internet is relatively new to Brumby Road, but now we have a real in-home WiFi network and tablets to stream video, and I discovered there are a lot of YouTube Chess Channels. One of the most popular, and my favorite, is Agadmator’s Chess Channel. He picks a game and does commentary and analysis for anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes. He will often say things like ‘White is OK here” or “Black is Better” or “White is Winning”. He is referring to one of the two chess sides.

But apparently YouTube has some AI Censors, or else there are some hypersensitive morons checking content. Look what happened last summer:

I heard about this at the time, but someone at the The Daily Mail in the UK just discovered it and decided to write about it.

Given all the frantic talk about systemic racism and a cancel culture looking for anything to jump on, I’m surprised chess has gone mostly unscathed. I mean, White moves first. Always. Is that fair? Shouldn’t the EEOC get involved?

You will actually hear the words “White is Better’ from chess commentators. But if I have the White pieces you are more likely to hear “Black is totally winning. White should resign” after only a few of my less than stellar moves.

When I lived in DC there was a game room in Georgetown that I could walk to. I played a guy one time, and as we were setting up the pieces he informed me he was going to be “the Black World Chess Champion”. He lost. White privilege no doubt. I apologize…