Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

It's online.

Our state tournament in late April 2022 is still currently planned for in-person. The last time it was at the Tacoma Convention Center, we had more than 1400 participants. This is only elementary and middle school. In April 2020, the event had 1200 on ChessKids and no middle school. I was principle organizer in 2021 when we had only 750 and ran it on this site, opening it to K-12. Three months before the event, we feared we would have fewer than 400, which would have killed us financially.

On benefit of online is that I get full and accurate game scores for every game.

You think the largest regional tournament in the United States is too small?

And that we had almost twice as many as the data was leading us to expect.

I suppose I might mention that to call it the state championship, our rules require g/30, or preferably g25 5

Getting back to chess and luck, I feel if two players are facing each other with ratings of 800 or 900,  and that is their chess knowledge,  scope limit, the winner is going to win not by luck, but finally check mate their opponent. 

I have to say I respect Ziryab in this dispute, and his true  love for the game, and it's future!! Ziryab= 100+    Only people like him will make sure there will always be a future for this wonderful game, especially exercising the brain,  and meeting friends over the board!!  I went to the casino last month and won $88,  gosh that was a lot of skill and made me feel like a winner and it did even though I needed 100% luck still felt good, and used my money to good use, bought a case of beer

In college, we could have bought 40 cases of beer with such a fortune. Rhinelander!

It also takes a fairly large space, which is not free.

From 2000-2011, I was always encouraging the kids at the school where I was coaching (I started as a parent volunteer) to beat Saint George's. They finally did. Since 2011, I've been coaching at Saint George's.

They are obsessed with it. I use it as a reward  when they are focused during the lesson, and then play some good normal chess. Then, I let them play a bughouse game in the last ten minutes or so. If I am needed to make four, I'll play.

Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

Probably not.
But there are some days that the player's brain is most active than others.

He/she can be more focused, have fewer problems and worries and other external things that can influence the chess game.

My teatcher used to say:
To have luck in my tests is to have studied what was asked!

I would say that there is. For instance, there was a game where I was better the entire time. I blundered in the endgame and saw it immediately. Luckily for me, the opponent didn't choose the right capture with enough time on the clock, so I won. I have to admit that I won luckily there and my mistake could've cost me dearly.

Just the other day, I faced Rubinstein French, my opponent blundered on move 7 and should've gotten his queen trapped. Luckily for him, he faced me - a foolish person (there are kids on the forum so I will not say what I should actually say ) who castled automatically as I didn't expect a blunder. Again, luckily for me, he played automatically as well and gave me another chance to capture his queen.

Another example is one endgame where I was dead lost, had a pawn for a piece or I was a clear piece down. Opponent blundered a check with a fork on his rook with 30 minutes on the clock or so. Of course, I missed a lot of opportunities as well, and there were some opposite examples, but I would say that I won some of my games because I was lucky and because opponent didn't exploit my stupidity.

I was quoted in a newspaper telling 1000 youth chess players to tell their opponents, “good luck” … “because there is no luck in chess.” Shortly after that, players started resigning to me more often when I had a slight edge. It made it a lot easier to go from 1800 USCF to 1900 than it was to get to 1800 from 1700. 

I think player perception/feelings of intimidation can manifest itself as luck.

Then, there is the famous saying attributed to many people over the years, but most often to Seneca:

”Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

We make our own luck.

Big part of this discussion is just talking at cross purposes. People understand different things by "luck" and disagree with opinions that their opponents do not actually hold.

If you look at it from a purely game theoretical point of view, luck can come in two forms based on two categorizations of games. One is deterministic vs non-deterministic games. Non-deterministic games have randomness built in that makes the outcome of the game depend on something that is beyond the players control (like a roll of a dice in backgammon) and therefore we can say that they involve luck.

The other categorization is perfect vs imperfect information games. In imperfect information games the player does not possess all necessary information to make the best decision (like not knowing your opponents hand in poker), thus she has to make assumptions that may turn out to be wrong through no fault of her own, and we can talk about luck in this case too.

Chess is a deterministic, perfect information game. At each stage of the game the player has all the information to make the best decision and no outside random event can influence the outcome of that decision. So from the game theory point of view, there's no luck in chess whatsoever.

Now, if you want to make it fuzzy and expand the notion of luck in chess to include things like "I got lucky because my opponent got distracted by thinking about her favorite dinner her SO promised to cook today and blundered her rook", then yes sure, chess involves luck. But so does everything we do, and there's no point arguing about it anymore.

The tone of your voice can convey that intimidation very well. That’s why I try to stress the phrase ironically. Good luck. Have fun. Play well, but not well enough to beat me.

Reminds me of a couple “good game” threads on this site. Remember those?

Some people say “gg” as a clue they think you should resign.

I do not want to flame you or anything, but you are just unfamiliar with game theory. Chess is a perfect example (no pun intended) of a perfect information game. Having perfect information does not imply the ability of the player to turn that information into the best decision. She may lack skill to do it, what is important is that no information is hidden. Also there's absolutely no randomness involved.