I think their may be something wrong with the pairings for Atomic.
In 148 games I have played in this variant I had the white pieces only 63 times and the black pieces 85 times.
Despite having already played as Black significantly more often, in my 5 most recent Atomic games I played, I had Black five times in a row.
I fully understand that it is not possible to keep it totally balanced and to never give a player the same color twice. But 5 times Black when I already have played much more games as Black? How is this possible?
When games are created with players randomly getting a color, there is no guarantee that the randomness will give each player an equal number of games as white or black. With randomness, it is always possible to get a sequence of 5 games in a row when you play as black. I don't think that the pairing system will give "compensation" for having black pieces the majority of your atomic games.
Theoretically speaking, as you play more and more atomic games, you should get closer and closer to 50% white and black pieces, but there is no guarantee of this, especially in the short term, since you have only played 148 games.
I'm pretty sure there is a compensation system.
Does anyone know the win expectancy for White in atomic? I'm guessing even at top-level play it's significantly greater than 50%.
@TMac310 #3 It has been said by Thibault that it has a compensation system.
@Toadofsky From all the atomic tournaments I’ve played I’m pretty sure it’s something like 55% for white 45% for black. The imbalance is not that significant but it’s there
Thank you all for your comments!
As I said, I totally understand that it is impossible to keep the number of white/black games completely even at all times. And I used to think that the pairing system had a mechanism to even it out as closely as possible.
It was because of my recent experience that I'm beginning to doubt that, or rather to believe that this compensation system may be bugged/not working the way it should.
If everything is indeed alright then I apologize for making a big deal out of a nothing and will just hope to get the white side in a game soon.
In standard chess or most other variants I don't even think about it at all. It's just that in Atomic it feels like a real big advantage to have White.
