Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

Here’s a game of luck:

Play guess the move while watching a couple of 500ish rated players play.

I got 0/12 in one effort. I’m usually lucky to score 50%.

This made me laugh out loud. Pure genius. 

 

39.Kf2 with 40.g3 to follow. I think you get a slight edge, but Black may hold. I agree it is a difficult ending.

 

My thinking is that the only way to win from that point is to get your king active on the kingside.

I think you were slightly worse when it became a bishop ending with all four bishops, but then your opponent dropped a pawn. 

I think if you stretch the definition of luck enough to include chess, then it will pretty much include every game and become meaningless. Unless someone can think of a game that would not count as having luck given the broad definition here?

I think of a luck game as one having chance built into the rules, like the dice in monopoly.

(as a philosophical determinist I could also argue there is no luck in monopoly, it’s all deterministic. But that would give me the same problem in reverse.)

I’ll tell you a lucky thing….by an unbelievable coincidence going back millions of years every single one of my ancestors was able to procreate. If even one had missed out on finding a mate, I would never have been born! What are the odds? I must be the luckiest person in the universe to beat those odds!

You get banned for saying stuff someone can’t understand, I get banned for the opposite reason!

A Chess playing philosopher. Oh no.

Mostly deterministic but I have some sympathy for Daniel Dennett views on it, for the same reason I still want to say there are things with luck and things without it (in other words it becomes meaningless)

 

That sounds delightful.

 

I tried my line against Stockfish and reached almost the same position you had in the game, which ends as a draw. Further study, however, showed two moments where your opponent blundered you into a win, and you missed the chance.

44.Be6+- Not so easy to see, perhaps.
62.Kd8+- also wins

You are unfamiliar. The game theory is not about figuring out what the best decision is. It is not hypothetical or simplified or any sort of analysis of any particular game's strategy. It is a branch of mathematics that studies games in the most fundamental way possible. It does not concern itself with calculations involved in a chess game. But it does analyze games in terms of what kind of factors are important when it comes to making a decision and whether they are in control of the player or not (among many other things).

I had to read a book on game theory in a graduate course in anthropology. For my paper, I offered a deconstructive reading of the text highlighting its failure to recognize the possibility of a draw. I used chess to illustrate. My professor did not know what to do with me.

Truth is it was a crappy paper. But I got a good grade.

 

The focus of the book attempted to use game theory to understand how humans developed (in an evolutionary sense) altruism.

It is correct, period. There's just no randomness in chess. Not being able to make the best decision is not caused by presence of randomness, but by a lack of skill.

Ah altruism and evolution, I read a book on that 20-30 years ago.

Bats in caves, giving each other blood when one has had a bad hunt. They are trying to determine if bats remembered individuals to punish defectors. Interesting stuff.

 

Me too. That graduate course in anthropology was 30 years ago. Can't recall the title of the book.

Were trying.

I can’t remember if they determined if the bats actually remembered individuals, but interesting either way.

Then the bats said to heck with this altruism stuff let’s cook up some covid..

The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins?

I read all of Dawkins books I am pretty sure the bat story was in one, the ethics/altruism book was something else but I can remember who anymore.

The course, ANTH 510 Advances in Anthropology was taught by four professors, each taking a quarter of the course. We had Geoff Gamble on cognitive linguistics; Grover Krantz on evolution; Tim Kohler on game theory; Fekri Hassan on cognition.

Krantz was notorious because he believed in Sasquatch and even had an ultralight helicopter he used for hunting the unseen beast. Another student asked once, "if you found Bigfoot, what would you do?" Without missing a beat nor lifting his eyes from the center of the table where he always looked (the seminar was held around a large conference table), Krantz said, "put him on the table and dissect him." A true man of science. Krantz became a Bigfoot believer because of a footprint he examined. The footprint exhibited bunions, which he thought couldn't be faked. As I understand, since he died, its been proven that you can.

 

No. A book on game theory and altruism.

Dawkins was referenced, but no professor would assign in graduate school something everyone was expected to know before they got there.

Sorry, never was an anthropology student

Let's spend a week in Vegas, and you will not only believe there is such a thing as "luck" but you will be positive I have not got any of it.