No, seriously, people have asked this question so many times yet not a single good answer has ever been given: Why are people allowed to play rated without random sides?
You see profiles where people only play white. Should Kasparov have been able to only ever play white in rated games in order to raise his rating? If that idea was seriously proposed then the person would be laughed at, and rightfully so. It's ridiculous.
Yeah, we don't have to play them, sure. That doesn't change the fact that they're skewing the average rating, it's unfair, and they aren't even helping themselves really.
Totally agree, they shouldn't be rated.
Being able to select colors for matches from the seek graph can be done away with, but for matches with specific players, the option needs to stay because some people play in leagues that require color selection for their matches.
Sometimes people want to improve their play at one colour and not another. We shouldn't do away with choice. Overall, everything averages out in the end.
#4
I'm only talking about rated games, they should definitely stay for casual because you might want to practice as a certain color.
Personally, I agree with this sentiment. I think for challenges the option of choosing the color is perfectly acceptable, it's necessary for league play, non-supported tournaments, etc.
However I think for a seek for a rated game it should be random. If I go to a club and sit down for a rated match, it will be random who gets which color at least for the first game. After that every game with the same player should probably alternate. Color selection should be for casual seeks only. If you want to practice with only one color, that's great...*practice* it, i.e. play casual.
**BUT** in practice the reason that this feature remains is due to the fact that it would likely significantly increase the number of aborted games. Players who are looking to only play with a color they prefer for all their rated matches will continue to abort games until they get the color they desire. There are already players who do this even though the option exists. That number would significantly increase.
Yet...I must wonder if now that we have the penalty system in place for compulsive fast-aborts, maybe it's a nice idea to revisit...
#6
Thank you, that's a very wise and informative post you've made.
You're absolutely right. I've found that people who only play one color will almost NEVER agree to a rematch because they won't play the other color, or if they do agree to the rematch they will immediately abort and then offer the "real" rematch. If this is true, which is it, then taking away random sides would very likely cause people to abort games when they don't get the color they want... then people would be posting about people who abort games all the time.
In a perfect world there would be something that got people to just play random in normal rated games, but I guess we won't see that happening.
personally idgaf what color the others choose and run with random myself for improvement. i dont get the point about caring the others choice or the maybe somewhat flawed rating. maybe u can view u rating as "a glicko 2 rating against opponents that are even allowed to choose the color everygame" ;)