CHESSIGMA
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Playing your weaker colour

When one colour scores far worse than the other, the cause is usually a habit rather than a talent.

5 minute read

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What a gap actually means

Nobody is genuinely better at White than Black in the way people say they are. A large gap is almost always narrower than it looks: it is one or two openings inside that colour doing all the damage, and the colour is just the label they share.

So the first move is to stop thinking about the colour and look at the openings under it. If your Black score is 15 points below your White score and you play one defence in 70% of your Black games, that defence is the gap.

A colour gap is usually an opening gap wearing a disguise.

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The other cause: time

The second common cause is not chess at all. Many players prepare their White openings and improvise as Black, then spend twice as long on the first ten moves and arrive in the middlegame with half the clock.

If your losses as the weaker colour cluster past move thirty, the problem is the clock rather than the position, and the fix is preparation rather than study.

Put it to work

The honest test of a lesson is whether the thing it warns about stops appearing in your games. That is what the trainers measure.