Is There Luck In Chess?
"There is luck in chess. My opponent was lucky that he was playing against an idiot." - Jim Loy
Last week, many of us watched the exciting Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Las Vegas tournament. The gambling capital of the world might seem like an odd spot for a chess tournament. Chess is a game of perfect information. Both players have the same setup and can see everything that's going on at all times. However, chess might require more luck than meets the eye. Jokers like the one below aren't the only ones who believe it.
chess is all luck, no strategy. it all depends on what pieces you get
— Austin (@adoptedhighway) February 19, 2021
Chess Is Too Deep To Calculate Everything
When poker star Daniel Negreanu mentioned on Twitter/X in 2023 that "chess is a strategy game with perfect information and no element of chance," he received feedback from some chess professionals, who disagreed. GM Robin van Kampen articulated the argument well.
I find that poker players often don’t grasp this statement. Chess players are so bounded by our ability to calculate that 1/10th into the “true” decision tree we just go off vibes (intuition). Poker players apply game theory and probability (ranges) in these spots. 1/7 https://t.co/TV9GeZVu4G
— Robin van Kampen (@robinvkampen) September 28, 2023
His point is that no one can even come close to calculating every variation until the end. The best players can calculate more deeply than most, but they still must frequently use their judgment and make an educated guess about the best move. If there's a hidden resource 10 moves down the line of a sharp variation, even the strongest players in the world will miss it most of the time.
He went on to explain that "the lived experience is nothing close to a game of perfect information; in practice luck is not determined by the information content in the game but by the ability of the players to process said content, and we're nowhere close to processing it all."
The lived experience is nothing close to a game of perfect information; in practice luck is not determined by the information content in the game but by the ability of the players to process said content, and we're nowhere close to processing it all.
— GM Robin van Kampen
Check out this complicated game:
GM Ni Hua played a nice attacking game, scoring a 91.6 from Game Review and defeating a strong opponent. Was he lucky that Black missed an amazing tactic that would have turned the game around on move 29? Was he unlucky that such an absurd tactical opportunity existed in the first place? Once the opportunity arose for Black to spot the winning line, the result of the game was entirely out of Ni's hands.
Prep And Pairings
While we are responsible for all of our own moves in chess, that only accounts for half the moves in a game. If your opponent plays better than his or her rating would imply, does that mean you were unlucky? If you stayed up the night before a game preparing and your opponent happened to play something you weren't expecting, was that bad preparation or just bad luck?
In the 2022 Candidates Tournament, everything seemed to fall into place for GM Ian Nepomniachtchi. He led the event from the very first round and cruised into first place with five wins and no losses. One bit of good fortune came when he played GM Alireza Firouzja in round 11, the day after Firouzja had played hundreds of hyperbullet games late into the previous night. Firouzja was clearly far from his best, and Nepomniachtchi won a smooth game.
You can't blame Nepomniachtchi for his opponent's late-night hijinks, but I'm sure that the other contenders like GMs Ding Liren and Hikaru Nakamura felt a bit unlucky that they didn't play Firouzja at the ideal moment.
Luck Favors The Better Player
Former Women's World Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk, recently claimed that "it's the strongest who has the luck… you need to deserve it!" GM Daniel Naroditsky even has a series on this site called "How To Be Lucky In Chess." Both of these grandmasters treat luck as a skill.
The strongest counter-argument to the claims that there's luck in chess is that we may just use the word luck to describe chess skills that are difficult to quantify. Yes, it feels like random things happen when players are low on time, but the strongest players win most of their time scrambles. It's hard to believe that they're just the luckiest players in the world.
How To Think About Luck
Regardless of where exactly you land on the debate around luck in chess, there are some lessons to draw. American chess player Dan Bock once ran a simulation of a string of random chess results to see how it would affect ratings over time. Over a series of simulated games, the ratings of the "players" routinely rose and fell up to 100 points.
If your rating goes up or down that much in your own games, it may be a result of your new training plan, but you shouldn't discount the possibility that variance could explain the rating change just as much.
I checked how randomness looked in my own rating history. Over the full history of my account, you can tell that I'm making gradual progress in blitz.
However, when you look at my rating history over any shorter time span, even one year, it begins to look like random variance.
Looking at the second graph, it's hard to conclude much about whether I'm making progress or not over time. If you look at a graph of the last three months or one month, it's just peaks and valleys. I suspect that you will see something similar if you examine your own stats.
It's best to respect the role of luck in chess. Don't be too down on yourself for one bad result. Don't get too carried away when you have a strong weekend. Luck will affect your results, but your training plans are all up to you.
Do you believe that there's luck in chess? Let us know in the comments.
