<jnpope>, in an older post on another forum, had mentioned that there once was a time when the color who moved first was variable.

Of course I was incredulous. But <jnpope> is both indefatigable and inimitable, and now you've offered proof most incontrovertible.

From <jnpope>'s post I believe that during match play, in days of old, players would have the same color for the entire match, alternating move.

"If here, e.g. 18. . . . QxRa1+; 19. Ke2, QxRg1; then 20. Nxg7+, Kd8; 21. Bc7#."

Reuben Fine, The Middle Game in Chess (New York: David McKay Co. 1952, Tartan softcover reprint, September 1972), at 20 (notation converted, cumulative enumeration substituted).

Kieseritzky had a plus score v Anderssen.

Some chess books actually claim that Kieseritzky was the winner of this game. (it was definitely Anderssen.)

Far from it.

“Why Worry?

It is too easy to take life and your a little too seriously these days.

The modern chess player will typically worry about next month’s mortgage payment, the phone bill or ChessBase Database incompatibilities with Windows ’95. He may drown his sorrows in the local after a particularly harsh from Fritz 4.

Worse still, a bad six months might well see an unhealthy drop in rating points, fewer invitations, little or nothing in the way of appearance fees and depressing trips to Wolverhampton to up a quick quid un a rapid-play event,

I find that the best antidote to these symptoms is a return to traditional values of the 19th century,

In those days, chess was played in cafes with the typical alcohol consumption a little more than the two units recommended to today’s beleaguered modern man. The so-called ‘Immortal Game’ was played in Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in 1851.”

There follows the ‘Immortal Game’

David Norwood, Weekend Telegraph. March 1977

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In his financial woes ending with depressing trips to Wolverhampton David forgot to mention that a good source of income was a newspaper column where one can reshuffle old often repeated games. :)