Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

So could I have won by playing 39 Bf7? My choice of the move played was almost random. I thought it was the right one but it turned out that it only drew because I think the continuation of my play was probably perfect.

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.

No point playing 39 Kf2 instead. His next move is to attack the B so it has to move in any case. The question is where the B moves to. Since he only has one good 39th move, I prefer to move the B first.

This was our follow-up game in the competition. This time I didn't take risks and didn't play lazily. I attacked from the word go, benefitting from a greater understanding of the starting position, gained from playing it previously. The first time I imagined I could win an ending but my opponent had played it well. This time I decided it should be the middle game. There's more luck involved there. A greater amount of potential chaos, risk and luck.

 

 

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 meant 39 Kf2 of course. Have you seen how I played it and could you improve on it after the B move? The B had to be moved, after all. I thought I was very slightly better with the four bishops on because I could maneuver, since I had slightly more space and indeed, my opponent blundered when only under slight pressure. I had worked out a method of penetrating his position but it wasn't necessary. But did the blunder lose?

Longing for a walk in the woods.>>>

Visit us, in Wigan. A ten or eleven mile walk takes me through town and through woodland which can't be bettered anywhere, and home again. It's what used to be the estate of the Earls of Crawford, so it's largely unspoiled.

I'n not unfamiliar with game theory but you're speaking from a theoretical or ideal standpoint, regarding it. Game theory is, after all, a simplified, hypothetical analysis of game strategy but that isn't entirely useful where the calculations involved to calculate the best moves are often too difficult even for the most powerful computers in the World.

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!

<<Also there's absolutely no randomness involved.>>

So for practical purposes that's incorrect. It's correct only in an idealised setting where the best decisions CAN be made.

Along with everyone else. A philosophical determinist? Elroch and I were arguing against that as a reasonable and correct knowledge-based philosophy, until he banned me from his threads for also saying stuff he couldn't understand. Part of that was regarding philosophy, which is where my qualifications lie.

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.