At the amateur level, where mistakes are relatively common, there is indeed very little if any difference between playing White or Black. It's only "great" in the uppermost tiers of chess.
why does everyone want white!?!?
Sort:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_move_advantage_in_chess
That's the "I'm-too-lazy-to-answer" answer, but since it only becomes apparent at high levels of play it's probably not relevant to us. Apart from that, I have to confess I do prefer playing as White because I get first choice of what opening to use, and my opening repertoire is better prepared there (I dislike playing against 1.e4 because of all the tactical shots, so I go 1.d4 when possible)...but there's constantly people on the forums pointing out that at my level openings are mostly unimportant, so I dunno.
Matthew11 wrote:
whats so great about it?
Everything is great about playing white. No matter at what level you play chess, White always has a higher win percent overall. So that makes it better!
Yeah, among lower rated players there isn't usually a lot of advantage to having the first move. Higher rated players can use that to their advantage. If you have the first move, then you can control the "tempo" or the "initiative" of a game from the start (i.e., if you make a threatening move, you opponent must react to it or suffer the consequences). If you can keep this tempo, you can not only dictate how and when exchanges take place, but possibly also control the whole course of the game(in theory of course).
Another reason people like to play white on here so often is so they can practice their favorite opening.
whats so great about it?