Is There Luck In Chess?

I cannot be positive but sometimes I think I get lucky in chess. What is the prevailing concensus?

It's not luck. Someone makes a bad move, then you have two choices: make another bad move or make a good move. Luck is never a factor.

No. There's no element in the game itself that effectively randomizes any outcome. Any sense of luck or chance comes from the behavior of the players themselves.

It's what Wegg and Blarg stated. There's no luck in the game itself. The only luck element would be your opponent missing because they found a worse move. This is certainly what you are experiencing. If your opponent plays better than you, nothing will be able to save you from your impending loss.

So long as humans play chess - And are susceptible to tiredness, distracting, stray thoughts - Or even 'indigestion' - There will Always be, that element of 'Lady Luck'!  0:

I would say there is luck. I agree all outcomes are based on the actions of the players themselves and not outside influences,  but sometimes the actions of the players are luck. I've had more than one game where I simply had no clue where to move. none. So I just made a random move that I had no reason or motive for making. Just moving a random piece to a random square. Often it is a horrible choice, but sometimes it was brilliant. So naturally when it's brilliant (not brilliant but lucky) it has been assumed it was cheating by a computer. Funny I have never had that reaction when it was a disaster.

Question directly to sloitdan: are you sure you want to rely in your opponent misplaying a position and you having to wild guess the best move to win?

I'm waiting for the first report of a meteorite hitting a chess tournament hall.

yes, good luck is when your opponent makes a mistake.  But if you always make the best possible move that you can see, and do not rely on them blundering, luck doesn't come into it.

luck is just a word humans use to describe when something happens that affects them.

Megabyte, I try to play as skillfully as I can. And I try to train to be better also, such as Tactics Trainer, Chess Mentor, Computer Workout, Videos and sometimes books.  But sometimes it just seems for some unforeseen reason things just lean my way. 

The only luck in chess is if you are "lucky" enough to get to play a bad opponent, or if you are "lucky" enough that your opponent has an off day, or if he misses a good move. 

Don't wait for luck to give you a chance. Always try to find the best moves you can within the time frame you have.

So when you wish your opponent 'good luck' you are actually saying 'hope I play badly right now'

Hard to provide an answer to that question. 

Many years ago a fellow master started a conversation with me on this very topic. He provided a pretty good example: say you travel to a chess tournament and then after round 1 you're paired against a strong player the following day, and you decide to study an opening variation all night, hoping that your opponent will walk right into it. And he does... surely that must be luck! went his argument.

But then again, according to probability, the more variations you study really well, the more chances your opponents will walk into a prepared line. A bystander reviewing the numbers and what happened, would simply state that there was 1(a) in x chance that your opponent would walk into that line, and that there is nothing to be surprised about. If you increase a, x is increased also. Simple mathematics, no luck. That same bystander would argue that everywhere else in the world, the same equation might have ocurred at some point in time where someone's opponent didn't play the prepared line. Can that be called luck? It's a very subjective question. If we analyse the data, for all those people whose preparation failed, there was obviously no luck. For the one who did work, perhaps, although he'd probably say that he was simply "recollecting the fruits of his labor". 

Moral? you've probably heard the expresion "The champion's luck", but I guess luck favours those who work hard! 

 I believe in luck.  The harder I work, the more luck I have!