does luck exist in chess

1. Has nothing to do with chess.

2. Has nothing to do with chess.

3. Is a choice that is not random, so is by definition not luck.

Sometimes I play with someone and I do my usual superficial analysis of not quite the relevant lines, he keeps pressing me, and then all of a sudden I find one magic move, perhaps quite outstanding and anti-positional, that I would not normally find, but obviously one or two moves anyone might just stumble upon, and this one move changes the whole position. This might qualify as luck, but of course it also means that my opponent miscalculated somewhat.

Let us limit this conversation only to what takes place on the board, not at home, on the way to the tournament, or in the tournament director's office.  Those things happen in life, not in chess, we should draw the line somewhere.

I find that "luck" in chess has been repeatedly described in this thread as something that one does not plan for or expect that turns out to be good or advantageous.  I find it strange that if the very same thing were to happen to someone and it was bad for them or led to a disadvantage, it would be considered simply a mistake.  I suggest that neither is luck, simply the merits of good or bad play, on one's part or their opponents, and the dynamic relationship between.

I find that when I lose, I have been quite unlucky.  However, when I win, it is through skillful analysis and careful calculation.

Chess is like poker. Yes, luck does exist, and it does play a huge role in the game, but skill has a larger effect than luck does.

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

"Luck or fortuity is good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chance, and attributed by some to reasons of faith or superstition, which happens beyond a person's control.^[1][2][3]

Cultural views of luck vary from perceiving luck as a matter of random chance to attributing to luck explanations of faith or superstition."

Cpablanca is quoted as saying that: "The good player is always lucky." which seems to be true.  I have seen numerous times that a lower rated player out playes a higher rated player, gets a won game, and then blunders.  When you play a move intutitively or follow a principle, you are playing the precentages.  When the game of chess is solved then the luck factor will be eliminated, but not until then.

Yes. Chess, like other decision making situations involves decision making,

which often means weighing potential reward versus risk. Some players

try to limit their risk at the cost of drawing rather than winning.

By the way, Nigel Short was funny after his loss to Luke McShane in the London Chess Classic. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of

"and suddenly I realised that neither of these lines work even though I have the better pieces and I have the initiative - I must have been quite unlucky", and Daniel King (was it?) replied "so that's all chess is - a game of chance?"

My apologies if I recall this exchange inaccurately. Also Kramnik expressed his surprise when he won a game in Tata Steel, that he realised that his opponent had no resources to stop his attack, because "in chess there always seems to be a way to defend" or so.

So apparantly he didn't have the better pieces and a non working initiative :D.

I don't think the blunders have much to do with luck. The likelihood of a player making a blunder is pretty close to proportionate to their skill (not completely, of course).

If your opponent makes a blunder before you do, then they have played a worse game than you. You will (probably) win, and win on merit / by playing a better game with fewer serious errors... that isn't luck.

I think that, in tournaments, luck has some role. For example, your 2nd place might depend on whether your rival for the 2nd place wins or draws or loses against someone else in the last round, and this is not really something you can influence.

Imagine a complicated position with only one winning move.

Tell a person who does not know the rules of the game to pick up one piece and put it down on a different square.

There is a non-zero chance that person will play the winning move. Would we call that anything but luck?

Very philosophical... I wouldn't consider an opponent failing to see something obvious as "lucky". Chess is a game of perfect information, everything there is to know, is right there in front of you, nothing is hidden. If someone fails to see a trap, it is a mistake, and an opportunity to learn so it won't happen again, but i wouldn't call it "luck".

 Nice!  That's why I say "chance", not "luck", because of the skill factor.  Skill isn't luck.

SZ.

No

Firstly, what is luck? And why do some people consider themselves as lucky while others feel unlucky?

Being “lucky” or “unlucky” is also a question of perspective, someone having experienced a serious car accident can see the situation as “unlucky” after braking an arm, completely destroying their brand new car they bought with a loan the week before. On the other hand, this same person could say, “I’m very lucky to be here.”  

Thus, one can say that being “lucky” is determined by your state of mind and the way you engage the world.

I would say yes. Even though the game is purely logical and based on your decisions, the luck factor comes into play with humans because humans don't always know everything what will happen after their moves: they always have a reason behind it, but they can't see everything that can come out of it; there's simply too much that can happen. Thus it's possible they can play a move and discover a resource they had no clue about 4 moves ago - something a strong player may well foresee - but in this case the ignorance didn't matter. The stronger player will avoid more trouble by foreseeing more potential ideas, but it's still possible for the lower player to not be punished for not seeing everything with full clarity. Sometimes he will, sometimes he won't; if he's not he could be considered a bit lucky, though if he doesn't I wouldn't say "unlucky"; it'd be more like he "got what he deserved". Now it's interesting to think: if he doesn't know everything that's going to happen, aren't some of the future events in the game out of his control? Chess being the game it is, it allows the person to try to control his fate, but depending on his limitations things can happen that weren't part of the plan, so for this imperfect creature, "luck" could affect him. Of course you can base your "odds" of some unclear move working based on intuition, but it's still taking some kind of gamble. When you lose control your last hope is that a resource magically comes up; again this imperfect factor creates an element of chance, because it's possible that a player can be rewarded for poor insight, which can be translated into poor skill; so how then could anything really be pure skill if it's technically possible for good things to happen without it? So it's probably more like 99% skill or something.

In this example for the amateur, to answer a question "how did you come up with this awesome move?", the answer would be, if he was modest, "I wanted to do this but I had no idea it would lead to this; I lucked out a bit there." Also the opponent, being human, may make an uncharecteristic blunder - one they wouldn't make in the next thousand games - resulting in you having to work less than usual.

Good points, Elubas, I wanted to say something similar but I was lazy. Short of chess being a solved game, and players being perfect computers, luck has a significant role. I'd say that a loss or win in any single game could well be due to chance. However, when we follow a player's results over a long time with many games, it's perhaps not that significant.