Consecutive games with the same color

I have noticed happening often to have a lot of games in a row with the same color.

I have seen this predominantly in tournaments, as I play mostly in tournaments, but it can carry over in regular rated games as well.

About a week ago I had 11 consecutive games with black, then after a few days later I had 7 games in a row with black, today I had 8 in a row with black.

I have noticed it happening with white as well, I remember having 7 in a row, 5 in a row, but not as often as with black.

This is very frustrating, having 8 in a row with black, especially when you play a tournament. And when it happens with white, I think "Oh my God, it will happen next with black, I will have 8 games with black in a row again."

I am not sure why this is occurring, it seems too often to be just random. I know that it cannot be done to have one game with white, one game with black. But maybe at most 3, 4 with the same color then force a change.

It feels necessary for tournament games, rated games to have fairly the same number of black and whites games for a player. The numbers may balance out over a long period of time, but in a single tournament it is probably not fair, competitive play for someone to have 8 games with white while another has only blacks. I remember tournaments in which I was doing really well just because I kept getting only whites in a row.

Also, in the long run, I think it would be useful to have color stats in your profile, see how many white and black games you have, what is your white win percentage, black win percentage.

I wanted to report this for a long time but I always changed my mind as to not appear that I am complaining or anything but as I noticed it happening often and it made me frustrated, I thought I should report it.

Consider the amount of people that play on this site. It's inevitable that some users will experience statistically improbable outcomes ie 8 games of the same colour in a row.

Thing is, it IS random and the source code is there to prove it. It's just one of those statistics that people only really notice where there is an outlier.

If you play outside of tournaments and use the rematch-button, then you will always get the other color.

This sounds like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
i.e you expect to get black multiple lines in a row, and then notice that when that happens.

It could also be that you have bad luck and get long lines of black, and with white you get shorter lines but some black mixed in, for example 2 white, 1 black, 2 white, 1 black, 2 white, 6 black, 2 white.

Overall, you have 52% white games, and 50.9% white from tournament games only. Source http://en.lichess.org/@/AncientRo/search?source=5&players.white=ancientro

I don't know how the coding is done, but having the color completely random every game seems like a bad idea to me. I'm not sure if it is coded like that.

Taking into account previous color of each player + forcing change of color if one has too many consecutive of the same color seems like a good idea.

@flugsio No need for the confirmation bias Wikipedia link. I did not say that I play more black than white, I specifically said that I believe it balances out over time.

I will resume my post in as shorter sentence so that you can understand better: It is bad to have a lot of games with the same color in a row. It is frustrating and it is not competitive.

"Taking into account previous color of each player + forcing change of color if one has too many consecutive of the same color seems like a good idea."

Except, it isn't.

#5 Supposing this is such a great idea, then this must also happen OTB... except I don't seem to remember any OTB event (other than a double-round robin tournament) doing this. But perhaps my memory fails me.

I have noticed this too - however, I think it is because of the expanding player pool... and the fact that statistical probability cannot be compared to actual events.