Is there any chance that a 1300 rated player can beat a 2700 rated player?

Yes this is very true, 12500 games is a lot. I just have a really hard time getting my head around the idea of a 1300 ever beating a 2700. It'd kind of be like a junior varsity basketball team beating an NBA team.

Well, anyone, really anyone, can blunder in chess -- in fact just recently an IM blundered pretty badly against me. It was that sort of unbelievable how-on-earth-can-someone-so-good-fall-for-that sort of moment. I don't think there is really an equivalent to that when it comes to the example you gave. I don't see how you could lose the game with "a blunder" in basketball; it's more that you just get outplayed in the long run.

As far as a true 1300 outplaying a 2700 move by move (strategy, tactics, everything), instead of the 2700 just making an outright blunder at some point before the 1300, that may well be completely, utterly impossible. But games can be lost just as a result of one bad move . I have experienced it more times than I would have liked to learn that.

This is true, but I think it would still have to be a really bad blunder, like a queen or missing a mate in three or something. It seems that on the relatively rare occasions when super gm's do blunder it's in time trouble or particularly complicated positions, both of which they'd easily be able to avoid if they wanted to.

I'm not saying you're wrong because I really don't know. Maybe the only way to get any idea of the percentages involved would be to look at all the games ever played between very highly rated players and much lower rated players (which would likely mostly all be simul's) and see if and how many times this has actually happened.

I think on this thread the best anyone has come up with has been about a 1900 or so beating like a 2700 in a simul? I'd also guess (although I am completely guessing here) that there have been more than 12500 such games played.

I admit that anyone winning more than 3000 straight games against anyone else seems unlikely, but the difference in ability also just seems insurmountable.

I don't have any official rating but I imagine it wouldn't be too much higher than 1300 and I can't for the life of me imagine ever even coming remotely close to beating a super gm! :)

This makes me think of the episode of Futurama when they're playing the Globetrotters.  Earth is ahead by a huge margin, but when Fry steps in 3 minutes to the end, the Globetrotters win (by 200 points, I think).

Not as a GM.

As I have said, I am not using the rating system to determine a probability. I agree that it wouldn't be helpful here.

"This is true, but I think it would still have to be a really bad blunder, like a queen or missing a mate in three or something. It seems that on the relatively rare occasions when super gm's do blunder it's in time trouble or particularly complicated positions, both of which they'd easily be able to avoid if they wanted to."

But again, we have tons of games on our side. For the record, very strong players have absolutely made huge blunders even in positions that were not, by any means, complicated. I could show you a few if you are curious; some of the most famous ones include Kramnik's blunder of mate in 1 in a fairly simplified position; and Petrosian's queen blunder (he literally just let his queen get captured for free), in a position where Petrosian was in full control. I could show you those examples and more if you would like.

Important distinction. To a beginner, 1300 players are highly skilled. OTOH, to a 2700, most GMs are hors d' oeuvres. Of course, it is always possible to choke on a small bone.

Let's look at this in different perspective. Chess consists of three parts:

• Moves of the chess pieces: All pieces have unique properties in chess, they all move differently. Let's say both 1300 and 2700 rated players know all about special moves from simple king move to en passant and castling.
• Chess tactics&strategies: At the beginning, both players start with an army of equal strength. So what decides the victory is the chess tactics&strategies that are used to overthrow the opponent. These tactics&strategies consist series of piece moves and helps the best utilization of your pieces, while neutralizing the threats of the opponent. As Averbakh says, "all chess combinations are derived from a double attack(i.e a fork or skewer)", so all these tactics can be discovered if the concept of double attack is known. But let's say that both 1300 and 2700 did their homework and know the tactics from pin to decoy/deflection, and the strategies including pawn formations and knight outposts.
• Utilization of the chess knowledge: To be successful in chess, both the first and second concepts should be utilized as much as possible. In short, you must not miss the strategies and tactics and moves ahead of you. A 2700 rated player sees more strategies&tactics and moves and considers them, whereas 1300 sees less.

As we can see, what an amateur lacks against a pro is not knowledge. What 1300 requires is the consideration of every possibility. So, if 1300 keeps his cool and thinks a lot, (s)he can play a good defense against a pro, (s)he has all the knowledge to achieve this.

A last quote:

"When you find a good move, look for a better one." - Emanuel Lasker

Amateurs do not understand the game as pros do, what they lack is understanding .  Most amateurs are also weak in tactics, evaluation , strategy and calculating ability ... pros are not . 

I 'won' a simul game against an IM (GM shortly after; his lifetime rating peak is 2635), when I was about 1600-ish. I wrote 'won' in quotation marks because I did not win. He was decisively ahead but overlooked a pawn-net mate in the endgame; the game was his to lose, not mine to win. In my opinion, the 1300 only wins against the 2700 when the latter is caught in a moment of extreme carelessness.

You most certainly did win that game (it's just a simul game, but it's still very impressive in my opinion). Philosophically you might not think much of it (although you should -- players, no matter how strong, are responsible for avoiding blunders at all times), but it is as legitimate as any other win. If it weren't, there would be no point of declaring the winner the one who checkmates or has their opponent resign seeing that it is inevitable -- instead chess would be like boxing, with judges to determine "who really won."

Sure, I would prefer to beat a strong player by outplaying them in every way, but there is no circumstance where, if I got the full point, I wouldn't feel like I actually beat him. Unless of course there is some obviously outside factor like the player having to leave the game for some reason.

JoseO, assuming there were a time delay, it's still a 100% chance to win for the 2700 with about a +/- 0.001% margin of error, if I had to guess.

The idea is that, even there is still a chance that the 2700 will make a terrible blunder, no matter how slim that chance was. I calculated that there is a 99.968% chance that the 2700 wins. Even though the ELO formula propbably does not hold very well for such big differences, it still says something.

He / she must have good pants in his/her head ,plenty of coffee and good luck on the table..wining is done.

FEDTEL, your math logic doesn't make sense. Suppose you are rolling balls down a hill. For balls of a certain size, the amount of time these balls take to traverse the hill is dependent on their moment of inertia and initial release time. For balls with a similar moment of inertia, the variation in release time is a deciding factor in which ball wins the race, although theoretically a ball could be higher rated in that if it is released at the same time as another ball, it should always reach the bottom of the hill first. However, due to variables in release time, this is not always the case, but it 'wins' enough to earn a higher rating. Now imagine you have a 2700 rated ball and a 1300 rated ball. the 2700 would win every time because release time is not enough of a factor to account for the differences in moment of inertia. This does not say that mathematically, the higher rated ball wins every time, because generalized performance is not the only factor.

I was simply providing a simplistic example of why your math logic is not sound. Just because there is a 100% chance of a high enough rated player beating a low enough rated player does not mean that, mathematically, all higher-rated players will win 100% of the time against all lower-rated players. Your argument does not make sense.

What do you think is more likely? My being elected President in the upcoming United States presidential election or you beating Kramnik in a chess game?

Another way of looking at the question: how would a middle-aged, short fat guy do in one on one basketball against an NBA starter?

Well, if it's first to score a basket from the free-throw line unimpeded, the middle-aged guy might have the edge on most NBA starters ;)