any other games where luck not involved apart from chess??

Are you sure it will??

 I"m afraid I won't buy that. If I play 2 billion games against Kasparov, I'll never win or even draw a single game. If I play 2 billion games against the world Poker champion, I'll win whenever I have a Royal Flush -- pure luck.

Also, in chess, if your opponent blunders a game his defeat must be attributed to his lack of skill, not to his lack of luck. The argument that says that you're lucky when your opponent is worse than you makes no sense to me.

+1

monopoly ( I know ..but I figured I would run it up the flag pole & see who salutes it )

Well that works when playing the bagpipes

It's not subjective in the slightest.  Perfect information games are, by definition and their nature, devoid of luck.

Comparing chess to a crime scene investigation doesn't really make a lot of sense, and certainly doesn't tell you much about the nature of chess.

Game theory is quite clear on this: chess is a perfect information game.

I recently came across the notion that "luck" is taking probabilities....personally.

My position is that it's not subjective, which doesn't leave a lot of room for opinions.  It's not a matter of respect (or emotion, for that matter), but one of established fact.

I think, though, that we're speaking two entirely different languages here.

You get lucky in chess when you play poorly, but right at the end, your opponent suddenly makes a silly blunder that they normally wouldn't make.  It happens to everyone, even world champions.

In Game theory a game is described as a game of perfect information if perfect information is available for all moves.

In chess, perfect information is available for all moves.

Therefore, chess is a perfect information game.

Here is Canadian player Ignas Zalys beating Bobby Fischer through superior skill.

I see your point there, but in this case would you say your opponent lost the game because of his lack of luck or because of his lack of skill?

See, luck is by definition equally distributed among players of all levels. In poker, the probability of a player getting a Royal Flush is the same no matter his skill level. In chess, on the other hand, the probability of a blunder is not equal among amateurs and masters, it decreases as skill increases.

Kramnik didn't miss a mate in one because he was lacking in luck that day. He was most likely lacking in rest or concentration, which affected his skill.

A fantastic example of imperfect information, and how the trade-off between the good of the individual and the good of the group can break down and end up being no good for either.

I was gonna say Monopoly too. You do have dice, so there must technically be some element of luck. But of the hundreds of games of Monopoly I've played, I've never lost a single game. So, either I'm incredibly lucky, or it's a matter of skill and strategy.

The pureness of chess is what I like about the game. Nothing but skill or lack thereof.

A chess player playing in the year 2011 is surely more lucky than one playing in say 1811 because of the ever evolving chess theories relating to openings etc; so in that sense isn't luck involved? Oh dear..this is getting complicated...