True, but IIRC going first is not a big advantage in Cards Against Humanity.
I remember one where the owner of the game goes first, so that would nearly always be the same person.
The idea of “who goes first” in board games reminded me of the coin toss in football (soccer) matches. When I first became a referee, I put too much emphasis on getting the coin toss right. At the highest levels of the game, it’s important to follow the proscribed procedure, but at recreational/amateur levels, it’s really not that important. Towards the end of my refereeing career, if I didn’t have a coin to toss, I would frequently have the captains play rock/paper/scissors to determine field and possession. It really doesn’t matter!
For a casual game of chess, I’ve always played where a player puts a white pawn in one hand, the black pawn in the other, the other player picks left or right, and plays with that color of pieces. For a tournament I imagine it’s some combination of random draw, the application of a computer program, and/or a committee talking things over.
Flying Buffalo’s Nuclear War had this rule, and it could make for a significant advantage, as each player had to commit to a sequence of playing cards two turns in advance of them coming into effect
So, not a great game to play while camping, then? 
Only a few km, but I don’t go into religious institutions any more.
A thread on these at BGG:
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/40494/idiotic-starting-player-rules
I just go with Chwazi.
I knew there was at least one BGG thread on this – thanks for finding it.
Brian
Hawks are so much more commonly seen than the other animals on that list that including the others seems redundant. They’re common enough that you’d often end up with three players saying “yesterday”, followed by “Uh, about 4 PM, I guess?”.
Maybe for the order of games, but typically in a chess tournament each pair of players plays an even number of games against each other, each taking white (and hence going first) an equal number of times. This is because, on the one hand, going first is a strong advantage in chess, and on the other hand, draws are common, so an odd number of games aren’t significantly less likely to be a tie than an even number.
Unconscious Mind, a game about the invention of psychiatry in 19th century Vienna, instructs players that “ The player who most recently made a Freudian slip is first player (or you may pick by a mother method).”
That is of course how it usually goes. It’s a cute mechanic, but unless someone had a bagel & lox for lunch, it’s all about the hawks.
Yes, the ‘two pawn’ method for casual games has been around for ages.
In a tournament, the players are seeded by rating, then the top half play the bottom half with alternating colours. You can toss a coin to decide if the top seed gets White or Black in round 1.
So a club event with 12 players could start with (first number gets White):
1 v 7
8 v 2
3 v 9
10 v 4
5 v 11
12 v 6
There are computer programs that will do the draw for each round for you.
Um, I’ve never seen this (and I’ve played in club, regional, national and international events.)
In my experience each player only plays once against another player in a round - and then in future rounds is never paired against any player they have already played.
Ah, I will certainly defer to your experience. What I described might just be for championship challenges.
This may have been the Mad magazine game. I recall something like that, though it’s been a few years so I may be misremembering.
Mad also had a “Spy vs. Spy”-themed version of War whose instructions began:
Two players should be divided into teams. To ensure interesting and exciting gameplay, we suggest one player be on each team.
I’ve never seen a hawk.
In the 1978 board game Class Struggle, the capitalist always goes first, but players roll a die to determine which class they play: capitalist, worker, professional, farmer, small business owner, or student.
Any birds of prey at all, in the Middle East? Around here, most of them fall under the broad umbrella of “hawks”.
And have you ever seen a bear, salmon, fox, or elk?
I’m a city kid, so it’s not like I see raptors on a daily basis. Still, I do get out to nature on occasion, and over the years I’ve seen golden eagles, snake eagles, griffon vultures, buzzards and kites, but no hawks. Most actual hawks here are just passing through on their way to Africa for the winter.
As for other animals, I’ve seen jackals (which do in fact live in or near the city, occupying the same niche coyotes fill in much of the US), wild boars, and ibex. I did see a bear once in the wild - on the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Virginia. One of the greatest thrills of my life.