How much of chess is luck?

"Luck: success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions."

"Chance:  A possibility of something happening."

Clearly no-one in their right mind can claim that an opponent's move from a given position brings success or failure brought about by their own actions.  So the alternative is what?  According to that definition of luck only one alternative to something brought about by your own actions is allowed for, that being 'chance', which is defined so vaguely that it covers literally everything that has ever happened in the world.

From the perspective of one player a game of chess is simply a sequence of chess positions in which they must make a move.  The sequence of positions come about based on one of a finite selection of legal chess moves having transitioned from the previous position.  The opponent is not even relevant to the equation.  The transition of position could be brought about by anything from the perspective of the 1st player.  All they have is the position at the end of their last move and a new position at the beginning of their next move.  Clearly this player has 0 control over whatever leads from one to the other.

So, if they end one move by putting themselves in a position where they can be mated then there is a percentage chance that when they are presented with the next position they are mated and a percentage chance that the mate didn't happen and they have another move to prevent it.  The fact that those percentages vary based on their opponent's skill is irrelevant.  It would be exactly the same for the first player if a probability function was used which happened to model their opponent's skill level and a random number generated from this model as to which move is played to present the first player with the next position in which their action will affect the outcome of the game.

So if this isn't affected by their own actions and it isn't luck then what is it exactly?  Witchcraft?  Voodoo?  Or just players not liking the fact that they can benefit from good luck to win, but if they lose by missing a winning move themselves it is all on them?  Of course, a player who loses because they missed a forced mate could claim their opponent was lucky, but no good chess player would do that - they would know it was entirely their own failure that led to it.  But the winning player will know that they won a game that they should have lost through an event they had 0 control over.

To me, luck is something that results from the actions of a rational agent unintended by the individual taking that course of action. It's like a supernatural force. 

With this definition, I think there is a lot of luck involved.

Chess is MATHS but yet it is based atleast a bit on luck

Yes, luck plays a factor, but a minor one.

Chess is not like poker where the cards are dealt for you. Chess is a game of plans, yours and your opponent's. There's an article that goes over this with some basic principles that you might find interesting: https://chesspony.com/chess-tips/

Good luck,

  Even though I take chess too seriously to depend on lucky wins instead on hard work put in developing my chess playing skills, I have to admit that sometimes I get just that (lucky wins) 

(Bold italics are mine.) - LadyM.

This is by far the best definition of luck in chess that I have ever seen so far!  The very best players can calculate moves, forced moves, probable best moves, and continuations deeper than the average chessplayer.  Likewise, the strongest computer has that advantage over the strongest player in the world.  But not even any foreseeable super computer can calculate every possible position in chess as proven by the fact that there are more possibilities than there are electrons in the Universe.  Simply nothing large enough can be built with all the matter in the Universe.

So even in the top computer, as well as the top player, eventually positions have to be judged.  Only until there is a series of forced moves to the conclusion of the game can anyone or any computer totally, accurately analyze things.  For grandmasters, this is when they resign or agree to a draw if they were playing for a win.  (Of course, grandmaster draws are an entirely different animal.)

This is also where skill starts to come to an end and luck begins to takeover.  This is where everyone begins to make calculated best guesses.  Yes, a calculated best guess is better than a 50-50 guess, maybe even 99.9999% better, but luck now starts to become a miniscule factor. And this is what I was trying to say from the beginning, chess is mostly a game of skill, but not entirely.  If luck is completely eliminated, then it is no longer a game but a mathematical puzzle of sorts.  As dead as World Championship Checkers.  Luck in some form keeps chess the game that it is.  The more skilled player will probably win, and more times than not win, but there is a chance for an upset victory by the underdog.

No player wins by skill alone.  No one can.  If they could, chess would be like a mathematical problem with one solution.  Or picture the initial position with a caption underneath it saying, “White to play and win”.

The day that chess is “solved”, is the day that chess ends.

Now, yes, chess is a game of skill and players can credit their success in chess to their chess skills.  But chess is not 100% skill and 0% luck.

The initial question is how much luck is there in chess?  Benji-min came closest to most accurately answering that question with his mathematical hypothesis.  And if anyone ever bothered to gather stats, they would undoubtedly reaffirm his two claims - 1) stronger players tend to draw more against each other than weaker players playing against each other and 2) conservative, safe players tend to draw more than wild, gambling, tactical players.

@LadyMisil, Wow, your logic and supporting arugments are so strong and impressive. 

P.S, You looks like a guy, not a lady, cos men usually enjoy in those logic, mathematics and philosophy.  

Or not. 

I suppose one short and unarticulated dismissal in lieu of a proper rebuttal deserves another. 

I been single all my life.  Had to for various reasons.  Maybe that’s why I think and write like a guy.  No man in my life to feminize my thinking, lol!

Yes and no.  A computer program finalized the effort, but the World Champions saw and knew it was coming.  So they changed the game of checkers among top players.  They drew lots to determine, by random, the first 3 moves.  Next game they would switch colors.  World Checkers Champions changed checkers sort of like how Bobby Fischer changed chess with 960.  And they did this many years before the program “solved” checkers.

Ahhh, here's your logic breakdown.  For this statement to be true you aren't playing a game at all.  Certainly not chess.  If the opponent is not relevant then...you are just playing yourself.  If you wish to say you got lucky while playing with yourself...I guess nobody could argue with you there.

I would hope most people reading this thread would already know that...but the point stands...in fact your comparison to chess960 backs me up.  The chess world is nowhere close to proving chess is a forced draw, in fact we're still 40 orders of magnitude away from that answer but some players consider the game stale and drawish and want chess960 to add variety...because of human limitations in play, not because chess is anywhere near solved.  This applies to checkers as well.  They applied the rule to mix things up and stop stagnant human play, but they had not proven it yet either.

At this point, I feel it's worth me saying that anyone who says something along the lines of 'luck only plays a small part in Chess' is agreeing completely with me.

The viewport that I am in direct disagreement with is that chess has absolutely no luck in it whatsoever.

SHARE MO LANG???

You are talking about two different issues in one paragraph.

First, no one has ever said anything about anyone “proving chess is a forced draw”.  Where do you get these illogical conclusions from?

Second, you talk about why some players choose to play 960 and then talk as if they were the only ones that count.  And you follow that up with reasoning as to why checkers players choose the random draw, as if all tournament checkers players were the same as some chessplayers.

Fact is, it was only after a major consensus among the checkers community was reached that tournament officials changed the rules.  Not an individual player choice, like your 960 example.

But most of all, you are stating the same reason, just in a different light.  Checkers was worked out enough that conservative players could force a draw.  It was “stagnant” because they could force a draw. 

Really, this argument of yours is getting more and more absurd and ridiculous.  I not even going to follow this thread anymore.

This isn't an 'argument' of mine.   I listed some of your less than logical statements and arguments a good while ago and you just got around to this one now.

You brought up the forced drawing, I merely pointed out that, like checkers, changing the chess rules to 960 if it were to happen would be more about the stagnation of human play and less about having proven anything conclusively.  It was your point that checkers champions had proven they could draw, ergo they made the changes.  This is not what happened.  As I pointed out and you admitted ("yes and no"), computer analysis proved this later on.  So, it would follow that they made the changes to avoid stagnation in human play, to improve the tournament experience.

I know you find this distinction baffling and picayune, but it was simply an example of one of several inaccurate statements you tried to use to bolster your PoV.  If you want to argue every one of them piecemeal then I think you should be frustrated at yourself at this point, not me.  I'll happily take you through all your errors if you want to bring each one up.  But you *are* the one bringing them back up at this point. 

No player makes a move thinking "I know exactly how this will work out" because there are so many possible moves in chess (more than there are electrons in the universe) that an opponent could always pull something unexpected out. And that's why we play chess, because no game is ever a forgone conclusion. That's why I'm going to the World Chess Championship in Holburn in November; because there's a possibility that Carlsen wont just roll Caruana right over.

And when you make a move, you are depending on chance to some extent on there not being a refutation that you haven't spotted. And that, in any other sport, is what we call luck.

Ever heard of forced moves and mates? At the start sure, but there are combinations you can calculate so accurately because you know the position and their options. You put to much thought into the notion of luck in chess. 

For a game that is unlike poker. Where everything is laid out in front of you without hidden variables you count on luck of the game. It's largely nonsense reasoning to me. I lose because i messed up or i win because they mess up or were simply out played on the game. I don't trust in the notion of luck like you need to for poker and other gambling methods.

Can you get to a forced mate from the first move?

No you can't, but you can play a good game of chess without calling it lucky or unlucky. Luck is an excuse for bad play from either side. You make mistakes and you lose, they make mistakes they lose. Nobody makes mistakes and it gets drawn. Either way, it is all in front of you, no pieces or positions are ever hidden from your sight.