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

His opponent would probably consider himself lucky.  It's not often that Kramnik misses a mate in one.

Here is Larry Christiansen demonstrating that he was better rested and concentrating more than Anatoly Karpov.  I bet you that's what he told all of his friends after the game.  Another great triumph for superior skill and preparation.

Repost:

"In chess, when an opponent plays right into my preparation, I always feel a bit lucky."

You bring an excellent example. It's hard to see how someone would argue that Karpov lost this game because he was unlucky.

You seem to be operating with a very different definition of luck from the common everyday one.  One definition of 'lucky' is 'meeting with unforeseen success' which is precisely what seems to have happened here.  I think most people would say Christiansen was quite lucky to manage to beat Karpov in this game.  Most of the time Karpov plays much better than that.

Maybe I am. I still stand by my point, though: what decided the outcome of the game was a variation of skill ("most of the time Karpov plays much better than that"), not of luck. If I were on Christiansen's shoes, I'd likely have missed the oportunity to crush Karpov.

But if you hand me a Royal Flush, you bet I'll win that hand (although I admit that I might not win as much money as a professional poker player with the same cards -- the original point I was contending was that poker depends more on skill than chess, NOT that poker is devoid of skill).

A bit earlier in this thread, I was arguing that luck plays a much greater role in games (of chess) between players of similar strength especially when either or both are playing in a sharp style.  In games where one player is much stronger than the other, usually skill will win through although there are exceptions such as the Fischer-Zalys game.  It is hard to attribute Zalys's win to greater skill.  Zalys was an untitled player, but he just got lucky.

As davidegpc noted, at Amber, where the players are playing blindfold or at rapid time controls, luck plays a much greater role than in games at slower time controls.  Players who are usually quite strong play silly mistakes, and the player that makes the last such mistake loses.  Blindfold chess is obviously a skill that can be honed with practice, but even at the highest levels, the results are quite unpredictable in single games.

Regarding your first paragraph, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. If you find it hard to think that in that particular day Zalys out-skilled Fischer, I find it even harder to think that he out-lucked Fischer. You could claim that Zalys was lucky that Fischer woke up less concentrated that particular day, but as far as I'm concerned the mood in which Fischer wakes up tells us something about the player and nothing about the game itself (since it doesn't affect the distribution of information on the game). If you stretch that argument, you could say that Karpov became a World Champion on a lucky day.

With blindfold and blitz games we agree that luck plays a much bigger role, since it affects the distribution of information in the game (i.e. the amount of lines you're able to abstract or calculate in a fraction of time).

Oh well, but what am I talking about, wasn't there a relatively recent and important match that was decided on a roulette?

In that sense, all time controls are a bit too fast.  In the middlegame, there is never enough time to consider all of the possibilities, and calculate them out to mate.  That's what distinguishes chess from tic-tac-toe.  In tic-tac-toe, some people can play a perfect game, whereas in chess, even the best players are relying on their intuition to some extent.  They choose from among a set of reasonable alternatives based on their best guess as to which will be most effective.  Which one is best isn't apparent at the time, and given the chance to play the same position again they very may well choose a different route.

This uncertainty is similar to someone rolling a pair of dice.  A skilled craps player may be better than some of his fellows at turning up snake eyes, but he is never quite sure what he will end up with no matter how skillfully he throws the dice.

Bridge, they say

When Radjabov beat Kasparov here, I don't think it was because Radjabov was the more skillful player.  Rather, neither of them were quite sure what was going on, but Radjabov's guesses turned out to be better than Kasparov's.  Kasparov was quite upset after this game was awarded the brilliancy prize, and you can perhaps understand why.  He bravely sailed straight into the wind, but somehow got lost along the way.

I won't even dare to give an opinion on this one, I really don't know what's going on. But it's a good idea to ask where do we put intuition, luck or skill. I tend to think that, apart from natural talent, one's intuition gets better the more he studies, but it's just a guess.

I found the reference for the roulette wheel, it was nothing less than a candidate match. Way to undermine my effort, FIDE:

"The Smyslov–Hübner match was originally tied at 5-5. After playing four extra games without breaking the tie, the match was resolved by a spin of the roulete wheel"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1984

Not just the dice, but the Chance and Community Chest cards as well.  I think Monopoly is another one of those games where the elements of skill that are present can quite readily override those elements of luck that are also there. 

I do think you've hit on the key here.  In simple games, "perfect information" serves to virtually eliminate the role of luck.  In more complex games where the outcome cannot be calculated from the start, perfect information is only of limited use.  You have to create heuristics to sort through all the different possibilities, but even then the relationship between specific moves and the outcome of the game is not obvious, so even the best players do have to rely on educated guesses.  An educated guess is better than an untrained one, but it is still just a guess, and thus leads to an uncertain outcome.

It is an important distinction -- from a practical standpoint, availability of perfect information can be hindered by imperfect use.  Limitations in our ability to consume and synthesize all of the information that's available about a given chess position do introduce uncertainty into an otherwise perfect information game.

Theoretically, tic-tac-toe and chess are the same class of game.  In practice it can appear to be a different story.

The issue I still have, is that these limitations are still ultimately a fundamental product of skill.  If I'm better able to synthesize the perfect information about a given position than my opponent, and as a result outplay him or her, it's not because I'm luckier -- it's because I'm better.

I'm not saying that chess does not require skill.  What I am trying to say is that between opponents of similar strength in games played blindfold or at fast time controls, even the strongest players can make uncharacteristic blunders that do not reflect their level of skill.  These blunders also appear quite regularly just before the 40 move mark in games where 40 moves have to be made in 2 or 2 1/2 hours for instance.  A strong player may play the opening and early middlegame flawlessly, but end up losing because he lacks the time to calculate the final crushing blow.  Who wins these games sometimes seems to be more a matter of luck than skill.  The complexity of the game is overwhelming their ability to find an appropriate solution within the given time.