First-move advantage
Recent sources indicate that White scores about 54 to 56 percent. In 2005, GM Jonathan Rowson wrote that "the conventional wisdom is that White begins the game with a small advantage and, holding all other factors constant, scores approximately 56% to Black's 44%".p193 International Master (IM) John Watson wrote in 1998 that White had scored 56% for most of the 20th century, but that this figure had recently slipped to 55%.p231 The website ChessGames.com holds regularly updated statistics on its games database. On March 17, 2008 the database contained