Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

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.

Wishing people "good luck" before the game can be an attempt to intimidate them, which can work if the opponent is impressionable. Therefore don't say it.

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.

I think that has been said in ten different ways recently. Not sure it's literally true because you aren't really talking about luck.

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.

That was a decent attempt at a good argument but it's incorrect, if you don't mind my saying so. The reason is this:
<<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.>>

That's incorrect because chess is a difficult game and if everybody always made the best decision regarding moves, it would always be a draw. There are many random elements which affect whether we make the best moves available.

So the more skilful a player is, then the percentage of good moves made will tend to become higher. It's more difficult to predict the accuracy of individual moves.

It's therefore reasonable to be sceptical about an assertion that chess is a perfect information scenario.

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.

Here's a case in point .... a recently finished game 0f Chess960 3 day rated. My opponent was a lot more skillful than I thought he would be and I didn't press hard enough in the opening. I probably had a forced win there. But in the ending, I had a choice of bishop moves and I think I drew because I played the wrong one. It's a difficult ending which is far beyond the scope of the analysis tool to play, so no help there.

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%.