In chess, the player who moves first is called White and the player who moves second is called Black. The pieces are often not literally white and black, but rather light and dark-colored. It has been standard for White to go first in chess since the late 1800s. Until the late 19th century, records of games show that the player who started first would choose the color of the pieces. The periodical The Chess Player, which documents a series of games from 1851, records that the German Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen, widely considered the best player of that decade, opened with black against the Baltic German master Lionel Kieseritzky. In 1857, Lowenthal, an English Master, recommended to the First American Chess Congress that the player with the White Pieces always move first.
There has been a debate among chess players since at least 1846 about whether playing with White or Black pieces has an advantage. If Black moved first, it would take some getting used to for players who are accustomed to White going first. This would be especially true for the opening moves, since the White and Black chess armies are positioned slightly differently. Socially speaking, an ideal solution would be to give both colors a 50% chance to move first. That is the way it was in shatranj, a precursor to modern-day chess. Instead of picking which player gets the favorable color, something like a coin toss would determine which color gets to move first.
