Does Luck Come into Chess?

if you actually take the time to calculate correctly and accurately, no. however when mortals see what looks like a good move, and play it before they calculate it out to a solid position, sometimes the pieces just happen to be in a position such that its ok, and sometimes the end position is not ok. and people call that luck. (either good or bad) 

Gerald Abrahams made a dry comment about luck in chess once. In one of his own games where his piece would have lost him the game rather than won it had he put it on the adjacent square about 20 moves earlier, he said that it is luck when it works and a blunder when it loses: I should have seen it :)

I would not be so quick to say no one can predict what a game will look like in 30 moves. The basic check mate with bishop and knight is more than 30 moves. Also with some end games it is a forgone conculsion  with well more than 30 moves. However does luck exist in chess  Yes it does. I would rather be lucky than good. Luck can beat skill anytime. Even GM's can blunder, and if you are the one playing at that moment and the blunder will win you the game, that is luck. Bad luck for the GM, and your good luck. Good luck on that happening though.

The US womens championship in St Louis in 2012 is an example, I believe game one. Check it out. The link is in the forums somewhere, they have videos of the match. The defending US champ was playing white and was in time trouble, and should have lost that game, she didn't see a move that could have helped her position, but black missed a tactical shot winning a rook, and the win ( because white would have resigned , or lost on time for sure then).

It was a tough fighting game and very instructive, it also was rapid time controls, where blunders tend to happen more, but still, they happen to everyone even GM's. So is luck a factor in chess games at the highest levels ? The answer is, of course it is, just don't count on it to save you, even though it might.

saying that the other person blundering is luck is ridiculous. if they played that move, they obviously didn't see that it was a blunder (or they wouldn't have played it), so they played what they thought was the best move, and if you win because they made a poor move, then you won because you are the better player, which is of course, not luck. (and that was a very long sentence with too many commas oh well xD)

Maybe but isn't it lucky they didn't see it ? I had winning positions where I totally forgot about an opponents piece before, is that poor play, or bad luck on my part ? Not seeing a simple tactic that one definitely knows is unlucky, and bad luck in the heat of a chess game. Or how about touching the wrong piece by accident. Its bad luck not playing ability at all.

Humans are imperfect and fallible in all mental pursuits, and chess is no exception. (Of course, right now, computers are too - but less so.) When and how we make mistakes is not deterministic, and may be considered chance events. So chance, and therefore luck, is part of chess, whether we like it or not. Theoretically, chess is deterministic; practically, it ain't!

The stronger the player, the less "luck" plays into chess.

Having said that, even the very best players succumb occasionally to a random move. The Anand-Aronian game that Anand won so brilliantly was a bit unlucky for Aronian in that he stepped into some brilliant home preparation.

But the strong player acts as if luck has no part in the game. Instead, they strive to minimize "lucky" moves that work against them while giving their opponents difficult problems to solve on every move.

The answer is no.

KCO, you can't be serious? You are 1200 and your 2100 opponent in an open event turns up flustered from their girl friend bust up/ Illuminati meeting gone bad, Kirsan's spaceship not arriving at the earth spaceport on time.

Yeah.  What the OP calls lucky for having his rook in the way, a stronger player will have foreseen it's usefulness in the pawn race... not so far in advance to know to put the rook there perhaps, but as the possibility of the pawn race approached the players can evaluate its presence and either avoid that variation or head for it.

In positions where people have lots of experiance some moves may be played with intentions reaching as far as the end of the game.

Although it is possible to play a good move for the wrong reasons.  I think this is where luck or good fortune enters into the picture.  This probably happens to new players a lot (very hard to follow up correctly though when you don't understand the idea, so they probably lose anyway).  Although this can happen to stronger players too.  I played over a Korchnoi game from his youth where his idea failed and now he was worse.  In a difficult position he had to sacrifice a pawn for some hope of counter play... but in analysis he discovered he never lost the advantage.  His conception as he had formulated it was not correct, but the moves were strong, and the pawn sac was the only move to keep his advantage.

Yeah, there's luck, all of it bad.

Of course luck is involved. If there were no luck, to equally strong players would always draw their games against each other.

You could argue though that because of the complexity of chess, there is no such thing as equally strong players.

Ratings are just statistical predictions based on past results almost certainly against dissimilar opponents.  Having an equal rating does not imply identical skill.  It implies that after a very long match the score would be nearly 50%

i think what we call luck in chess is the amount of our opponent's distraction(luck) or our distraction(bad luck)..Everything that wasn't forseen while we and our opponent concertrated hypothetically 100 % is not luck is limit of skill.. 

'Hypothetically' being the key word - no such thing in reality.

i tend to disagree humans are not computers, i bet even the strongest players make oversights all  the time. Maybe not tactical, but other positional strategical mistakes, at least that my believe. wrong or right i dont care ;)

you mean the game were Anand played the slav against aronian?

It is impossible to take the time to calculate correctly and accurately.