Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

Capitalizing on an opponents mistakes or lack of skill is not random chance; Failing to see a mate in one is a lack of skill, not random chance. 

I prefer random chance to luck, as anyone can claim anything is luck. It is a nebulous term. 

I should be clear that my position is not an opinion. It is a fact, statistically speaking, that luck/randomness/entropy/chance/whatever your personal preference of verbiage is a part of any human process (be it hitting a baseball, performing surgery, drawing a circle, selecting stocks, etc.).

If you (correctly) recognize that all of my examples are based on chance, then something that may help you understand is to think about if a player selects his moves based on said chance. So all available moves are put in a deck, randomly shuffled, and the player plays whatever the top card is. In any given position, it would not be that rare to see the player choose the "correct" move in the position, based solely on the outcome of the shuffle. Using this strategy over the course of a game though, the probability of repeated "correct" selections decreases exponentially by the number of trials.

Hence chess is a game of skill (a skilled player plays "correct" moves at a reliably higher rate than chance) with elements of luck intertwined (the basis for their selection need not be based on anything concrete) just like anything else. 

The higher an activity trends toward the skill side of the luck-to-skill spectrum, the lower the number of trials needed to ascertain ability vs. luck. Since chess is pretty high up there on the skill spectrum I'd say, it would be obvious within 10 moves that I am far worse than a GM for instance. But the point is that it is on a spectrum and not a boolean. 

Coolout, how long have you been playing the game of chess. Have you every been in a chess tournament especially USCF one?    I am a life member of the USCF, and you cannot get a life membership any more, not sure why?  But I see no reason for you to attack your seniors in the chess field, they know their stuff and all I have to do is talk to one of them and know I will not have any luck beating them. But against you, I think you could use plenty of luck and you may beat me    have you played many chess games in your life? Read any books, watched videos, and most of all, you are very lucky to be addressing such great and worthy players posting here. If you want to put them down try doing it at the chess table OK, why do you have such a low rating, are you new to the game?????

The lack of skill is not random chance. There is no luck there. The beneficiary, however, experiences luck.

Kramnik was not unlucky when he missed a mate in one. But, his opponent was lucky that it happened in their game.

To tell you the truth, it can cheapen a victory when you are the recipient of such luck. It is much more satisfying to provoke an error through relentless pressure than to win through a strange oversight.

Very attractive dogs you have Ziryab, hope they have a lot of room to run play and enjoy their life which is far too short!

Thanks. We have a decent size yard. They also had a few trips to our cabin where they could run on five acres, and we have been on many long walks in the city and in the woods. Now they are old dogs and they cannot do the long walks and hard play. But COVID has facilitated us working at home, so we are with them almost all the time.

I have heard this a lot from my opponents - "You can win only by luck".

Yes, it is true i win only by luck.

No such thing as luck in Chess, however, there are blunders and bad positions. Consequently, luck in Chess is when you win a losing game, and most of the time, it is your opponent who has handled you the win, due to your constant observance. That to me is luck in Chess.

I am of the opinion that luck or lack of luck are just a way of saying something happened according your wish or against your wish.

Luck or unlucky does not exist in Nature. They are a thing created by man.

A stone was hit by a lightning and exploded. Did this stone not been lucky?

(My opinion only)

I've done no such thing. You need to learn how to read.

If you won't quit and the mods won't take action, then I'll be forced to assume that it is okay to be honest with you instead of continuing to treat your comments as an honest effort to exchange differences of opinion.

You said you have never seen people in real life who play chess, and then proceeded to explain to the rest of us how chess is played in New York parks. You wouldn't know.

The fact is that you know nothing about chess That's why your rating is so low. You need to learn elementary relationships between the pieces. I teach this to students. Everyone starts out without board vision. Most young players and adult beginners learn to develop it. Your head, however, needs to be extracted from its present location, and the digested foods cleaned from your ears and eyes before you can perceive anything correctly.

You have no idea what I think because you cannot read with with comprehension. Every time you quote one of my comments, you proceed to argue against something that is not there at all.

Of course, none of this is personal. Rather, I am simply pointing out that the vile you contribute to these threads support your status. If you left this site, the lie of your status would reverse. The only immaturity I've seen in the past  few days, aside from children typing "hi" in some threads, has emanated from your posts.

Your delusions are certifiable. Please get help.

Let's not get carried away. This is pure faith in something for which there is no evidence.

Again, to be very clear, it is a statistical fact and not an opinion that randomness plays a role in all human actions, skilled or unskilled.

Something that might help you is something that helps my students when they are bewildered about a topic: approach trying to understand with the knowledge that you are wrong, and work backwards from there. What wrong assumptions are you making? What about the implications of the assumption?

In this case you correctly state the definition "success or failure brought about by chance rather than one's own actions". You also correctly recognized that the results of things like flipping a coin or picking a number out of a hat are based on chance. So it seems like you are failing to connect the idea that human action does not make an activity devoid of luck. I pose the same idea as before-- a player makes all of his moves based on the cards he selects out of a deck and somehow wins the game.

There is no skill involved in making the moves, because as you said about selecting the cards, they are based on chance. So the win (the success or failure) was clearly brought about by chance (the selecting of the cards) rather than the person's skill

Well one, you absolutely can get more skilled at rolling dice (see about 55s into this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV3uDea0aE&ab_channel=JREClips) but to avoid being pedantic, I agree that it is best to consider it a completely random activity (as I've said before, I think a good measure of skill is if you can beat the randomness inherent in the activity, e.g. rolling a 1 more than ~1/6 rolls; in the case of the great dice roller, it would take a large number of trials to show his ability is by virtue of his skill rather than random variation, whereas in the case of the great chess player it would take just a few trials). 

But more importantly two you seem to be hung up on human action. When I pointed out earlier that selecting a card from a deck, picking a number out of a hat, flipping a coin, etc. are also based on human action, you said they were based on chance. But now when that same human action that results in a chance outcome is responsible for moves on a chess board, you are saying it is skill?

Nobody is saying chess is based on luck, but the question is if there is such thing as luck in chess. In other words, is luck a part of chess. And the answer is yes, it is a skill based activity, but just like in basketball, performing surgery, or practicing law, there are elements of luck to it. 

In my case, when I blunder and opponent doesn't exploit it, so I have an opportunity to save the game, I consider myself lucky. You can't base your game around it, that is why you have to play carefully, but I can't say that I wasn't lucky there.

Of course in this example you could say that the opponent's skill wasn't good enough to find the mistake, but it is a coin toss. If he gets 5 such opportunities, he might exploit it 3 times. So call it as you will, but I didn't get a good position because of my skill, I did it despite my mistake.

When the opponent blunders and I don't exploit it, I don't really consider him lucky, I consider myself to be an idiot.

I'm not arguing with you. I am pointing out your errors in fact, in logic, and in misrepresenting my position. I'm also noting the absurd personal attacks grounded in complete ignorance.

The element of luck in chess is quite debatable. Remove your vile posts from this thread, and what remains is an interesting debate by informed chess players who disagree without being disagreeable. 

However, with your comments, this thread has degenerated into a childish quarrel. 

You say that selecting a card from a deck is chance... and then say that if you label the cards in the deck as all the available moves in a position and play whatever move (card) you select, that the move is skill?

Last thing I'll say is it is definitely not semantics to say something is based on luck rather than has elements of luck in it. Rolling a dice is based on luck because you can not improve upon the 1/6 luck inherent in the activity. Playing chess is based on skill precisely because you can improve upon the 1/50 (say) luck inherent with selecting a "correct" move.

The question is if there is such thing as luck in chess, and since the game is skill based with elements of luck, the answer is yes.

I said: "When I pointed out earlier that selecting a card from a deck, picking a number out of a hat, flipping a coin, etc. are also based on human action, you said they were based on chance. But now when that same human action that results in a chance outcome is responsible for moves on a chess board, you are saying it is skill?"

And then you said: And YES Exactly,  thats exactly what I'm saying.  What are you disputing about that?

So again, I pose the same question that I have posed three times before: if in every position, you relabel all the cards in a deck to reflect the possible moves in the position, shuffle them, and then play the top card and somehow win the game, is that because of luck (in which case you are saying that luck is an element of chess) or skill (in which case you are saying that selecting cards is not a luck-based activity).

It is not semantics. If you can't tell the difference between rolling a dice (luck-based) and performing a surgery (skill-based with elements of luck), I don't know what to tell you. And again, I am telling you that it is not my opinion, but a statistical fact that luck and randomness play a role in any human activity. You are not arguing with me but with the laws of statistical randomness. 

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." 
Seneca

Four years ago, I won my local chess club's winter championship. So far, it is the only time I have done so. My fourth round opponent was the strongest player in the club. Both of us had played poorly the previous year and were below our normal ratings. But, we were moving up again.

I had a week to prepare for the game with the knowledge that I would have White. We had played several previous games in which he adopted the Queen's Indian Defense, so I reasonably expected that could happen again. In all those prior games, I had played 7.O-O and then found irritating his 7...Ne4. In my study, I sought a way to prevent this and found that 7.Qc2 before castling secured the e4 square. After 7.Qc2, Black has six replies that get played by masters with some frequency. I looked at about fifty GM games with the four most popular replies. Most of them were long battles,, and I felt that becoming more familiar with the common patterns might help me in the game.

There was one line that had been played a few times and that often led to a very rapid collapse for Black.

As I was leaving for club, my wife said, "good luck." I thanked her and said I was probably in for a long game, but there was that one line that was very bad for Black.

My opponent played that line and I was prepared. Seneca would ironically suggest that my preparation produced my own luck.