Adolf Anderssen had the first move with Black in several games in his casual match with Morphy -- they played a sort of "skittles match" after the official World Championship match. Actually, the fact that they played such a match may be an even bigger difference from the way things are run today. It was a much more entertaining match than the official one -- more pieces sacked, etc.

In three games, Anderssen not only had the Black pieces, he opened with 1.a7-a6. How's that for making your head hurt?

And he had an even score in those games!
Leon Shernoff | Homepage | 06.20.09 - 8:57 pm | #

Larry Eldridge's response to this post is inadvertently in another post's thread, but I had similarly noticed that in this year's Paramount it was only my not-entirely-merited draw with Larry that made my results with Black better than my results with White.

I admit to having a bit of Bogoljubov in me, believing I can make something of the first move. Checking out that Wikipedia page, I learned that his last name means "Beloved of God" in Ukrainian, yielding another shade to his famous quote about winning chess games.
(That's in Wikipedia, so it must be true, right? )
Ken Ho | 06.23.09 - 5:27 pm | #

RE 1.a7-a6: truely the most possible zen first move. Could be called the Miles attack if future rules ever merit that black gets to move first.
Mike Griffin | 06.24.09 - 1:23 pm | #