Does winning involve any luck ?

If your opponent is tired or sleepy or played an opening you recently memorisised then yes, i think luck is involved.

two players with the same rating wouldn't draw every game..

So a 1400 player beats a 1700 player... What is the reason for that, if not luck? Surely if both were playing to their skill rating, the 1700 should beat the 1400?

Others have posted that ratings is about the probability of one rating winning against another person of a different rating.

Chess is nothing but a game of pure luck. When you make a blunder, it’s because your opponent was lucky. If all your moves are good then that doesn’t mean you are a good player, it just means that your opponent wasn’t lucky enough for you to make a blunder. 

http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/Trivia/Chessluck.html

Ha!  All great games have some luck involved.  Luck and chance are two different things.

If it's a human endeavor, luck plays an important role.

Electricity wasn't "invented", dude.

Well, I'm with the Virgin on this one.

The fact that your opponent makes a mistake is indeed lucky for you but you still need to know how to punish it.

I wrote a several paragraph, definition based, stringent reply to this over the course of an hour and a half, pressed 'preview' and it was all gone because a new post had appeared in the meantime and the post wasn't saved.

Bob, if that should happen again, use the back button on your browser and repost.

http://www.chess.com/blog/kiwi_overtherainbow/good-chess-bad-chess---good-luck-bad-luck

Even at the highest level there is an element of luck involved. At the Candidates Ivanchuk for example spent all his time very early in both his games against Aronian and lost on time, while he played at his best in his games against Kramnik and Carlsen. Kramnik played the Berlin against Grischuk, an opening he has used for many years without ever winning a game with it, and in a position that was well analysed and extremely drawish Grischuk just spent all his time and blundered away the game with seconds on the clock. In the Beijing tournament Gelfand was in no trouble against Giri, but forgot about his clock and lost on time.

I think it was Tarrasch who constructed some sort of luck table to try to prove that Lasker won his games by luck while Tarrasch himself was the more deserved winner. Now this is going a bit too far, but some things that happen during games are connected to coincidences that can't be affected by oneself. A player can have prepared a strong novelty for many weeks and who plays into it is partly a result of coincidences. Another player may have been unable to sleep one night and plays much below his usual level the following round, etc.

yeah, i agree with fabelhaft.

some don't like to call it "luck" (ie, kiwi :P). can we call the eventuality of having unpredictable favorable/unfavorable events something else? :P

Why some people don't like to call it luck is what interests me.

I tried that, but the posting field was still blank. I know it works on most forums. I should've Ctrl+Ced it before posting.

hilarious

Yes, I never understand that either, maybe it has to do with some sort of thinking that every single chess result must be somehow 100% "scientific". But you can never do anything yourself about Ivanchuk or Gelfand forgetting about the clock before their 40th and losing on time in a position that can't be lost in some other way. If it happens you have been lucky, simple as that. Just like in some other less obvious cases. This obviously doesn't make chess some sort of roulette style game though.

No indeed. With chess the "dice" aren't on a green baize table; they are inside the players' heads along with all the skillful stuff.

(Aw craps, I'm thinking about another game, but you get the point.)