Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

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Stil1
Optimissed wrote:

It's happened to me twice. Once I went out for a walk between rounds and found a young lad with his arm compound complicated fracture and stuck in a piece of antique mining machinery. I had to organise rescuing him, make his friends find someone with a phone etc, hold his hand while the paramedics tried to get the bits of bone joined up again. But they may have given me a full point bye. Can't remember. Another time, same scenario, saved someone's life who was having a massive heart attack. My opponent didn't even stop my clock that time.

Bad luck for you (chess-wise); extremely good luck for those who you helped. thumbup.png

(And also a reminder that, even when we're laser-focused on those 64 squares, and times seems to stop, life itself, beyond the board, still goes on).

Stil1
CooloutAC wrote:

lets say yes,  but not due to, or having anything to do with,  the game of chess.

Fair enough. thumbup.png

GhostNight

Did not think  this topic would turn out to be such interesting reading, and it did spark a memory from a chess tournament at my level,   I may have come out on top, if it were not for the last round. My opponent really new what he was doing and I just went along not realizing I was giving an advantage that cause him to have the luck working in his favor. He did two things, one we used his chess set, which was NOT standard design, and he had his wife sit next to the table with her very short dress and kept swinging here leg where my eye  would catch it.   Luck was very much on his side and I lost, because I was being distracted..   But that is when I said to myself, enjoy the game for what it is at my level, and take the real world more serious!?  

GhostNight

I agree with you, and I am the one that lost the game and get credit for the lost.  But I did later think about it, and I realized that he did the same thing in every previous game he played in the tournament.   That is why I felt luck was in his favor all those games?  Just an example of luck to me??  

Ubik42
Talking about players withdrawing from a tournament…

Years ago I faced a player a couple of hundred points higher than me in a small tournament. I beat him, and he promptly withdrew.

At the end of the 4 game tournament 1st place came down to a tiebreaker. I wasn’t familiar with the rules at the time but I assumed tiebreak would count the average rating of the opponents of the players involved, and thought I should win the tiebreak easily.

But instead the tiebreak is based on performance in that tournament. Well guess who lucked out on that because my 1st round high rated opponent left with goose eggs in his column.

To this day I have a pretty strong opinion over how tiebreaks should work….
GhostNight

Now it is getting silly. we had some pretty good chess heads give there opinion, and some really great evaluation of luck and chess, I would just like to add my final comment and that is

Luck in chess really is there, but diminishes the higher level you play the game at!!! simple! wink.png

Ubik42
Trolling with the declaration of independence that is a first
LeeEuler
CooloutAC wrote:
GhostNight wrote:

Now it is getting silly. we had some pretty good chess heads give there opinion, and some really great evaluation of luck and chess, I would just like to add my final comment and that is

Luck in chess really is there, but diminishes the higher level you play the game at!!! simple!

many have made the same statement.  But it in itself contradicts that luck is there.   If skill diminishes luck,  then it can't be considered luck to begin with by definition in the first place.      When I bought this up to Optimissed he literally told me he doesn't believe in dictionary definitions.   So I guess if you people just want to make up a new meaning for the word luck then go head.  I'm talking to the wall.   All I know is you are ignorantly implying that chess is similar to other board games,  when it is clearly not.  And the whole reason it is not,  is solely because luck is not a factor.  Why you want to diminish that fact is what I find suspicious.

I think you are confused about what luck means. Random variation is part of any human process, skilled or not.

 

If you ask a skilled typist to type the word "word" they will likely be able to do so. Also a baby who may not understand words at all might luck into pressing the correct four keys in succession if also asked to type "word" (has a 1/26^4 probability). This is the random/luck element inherent in anything. A task becomes skill based when one can reliably improve upon the luck inherent in the task as the number of trials increases e.g. can the typist beat 1/26^n accuracy for n letters? Or to work back toward chess, can a player reliably make the "correct" move at better than the (say) 1/50 moves they have to consider? For one or two moves, a player with no knowledge of chess whatsoever might luck into selecting the "correct" move by picking it out of a hat. Over a game though? Essentially no chance.

agentdave

If a player hangs 1 queen every 1000 games is the player he hangs the queen against lucky?

 

LeeEuler

A human action is behind flipping a coin, selecting a card from a deck, rolling a dice, picking a number out of a hat, etc. too

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Ziryab
Optimissed wrote:

^^ So he's demonstrated rather well why luck plays a diminishing role in chess as skill increases.

 

Conversely, when skill is absent, luck prevails.

For instance, a player lacking the ability to checkmate might still win on time (something out of the player’s control) or through the opponent’s resignation.

agentdave

You can't control the quality of your opponents moves

 

agentdave

That's the point, you could get lucky and face your opponent when they're having a bad day, or be unlucky and face them when they're on a hot streak.

Ziryab
CooloutAC wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

^^ So he's demonstrated rather well why luck plays a diminishing role in chess as skill increases.

 

Conversely, when skill is absent, luck prevails.

For instance, a player lacking the ability to checkmate might still win on time (something out of the player’s control) or through the opponent’s resignation.


here you are again.  You already admitted twice that chess is not based on luck by game design.  Yet you just can't help yourself.   Give me an example of "something out of the players control" that relates to chess.   Because you are contradicting yourself once again.

Winning on time is absolutely in the players control.  He simply failed to move on time,  his fault not the games.

 

As noted earlier, multiple times, White completely lacked understanding of checkmate and was nearly out of time. Black’s resignation was a stroke of good luck.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/how-beginners-play#comment-64750417

This happened to me in reverse. In a blitz game, I was reaching out my hand to resign just as my opponent’s flag fell. He shook his head and looked at the clock. Only then did I realize he did not know my intent, and therefore I was thanking him for a game after I won.

 

Try to keep up. It is no contradiction to distinguish the game when properly played from the game as it is played by ordinary mortals. The less the skill, the greater the luck. At the top levels, luck is almost imperceptible.

Ziryab

Strong players remember their games. A weak player can look at an illustrative game and not know that he himself is the object lesson.

Ziryab
CooloutAC wrote:

 

 


I don't care if I get permanently muted for this. 

 

Admins.

He knows what his immature and stupid personal attacks merit. He is daring you to act.

The attacks are dulled by his absolute lack of credibility, but they remain vicious personal attacks. Even the viciousness of a defanged dog violates the TOS.

BellandC

Perhaps luck does play a role but it's all about setting up before hand

Ziryab
CooloutAC wrote:

There is nothing random about that.  

 

The design of chess, which you put great stock in, presumes that players will look at the board before they move. Beginners look without comprehension and make moves that appear random.

Maybe you are right that is is not random. Maybe you can explain the thought process behind dropping pieces willy nilly and resigning just before you win on time. Maybe you can explain the logic of moves that appear to be random chance to chessplayers who see elementary relationships between pieces.

 

Everyone suffers blindness now and then. Their adversaries benefit from the failure of perception. That’s a luck break. Kramnik missed a mate in one, once, in thousands of games. Many GMs have. I’ve missed a mate in one hundreds of times. Beginners often miss a mate in one twenty times in a single game.

How can we claim that the opponent of such a player is winning on the basis of skill?

Ziryab

From “Was” in Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner:

”’Hah,’ Mr Hubert said. ‘It’s said that a man playing cards with Amodeus McCaslin ain’t gambling. But no matter’.”

The presumption, and I could have this backwards, is that Amodeus is so bad at cards that the element of luck normally associated with the game is no longer present.

Can we also say that in certain games allegedly lacking the element of luck, some players are so bad that luck favors their opponents regardless of skill?