Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

I meant muted but mistakenly typed the wrong word.
I've edited my post.
Thanks.
Can't agree that Dio deserved any mute though.
His posts are righteous.

Ok, I still didn't like his posts either way

If you're playing someone better than you and win you may be better than them or lucky they had a bad day. Only way to tell is to play again.

Poor play is not luck, it's lack of or poor manifestation of skill.

so yeah luck is not involved with chess what so ever.

@mpaetz

yes pretty much

@playerafar

Yes, the mathematics comparison does reflect the deterministic view of chess that some, including Dio, hold. Chess is a set of game rules that allow players to observe the data and their job is to solve it to the best of their ability and arrive at a conclusion. Simply a matter of skill right?

Reality (or luck) strikes when you think a little bit further.

There is nothing lucky about a math equasion or chess position itself. The possiblity of luck, or chance for that matter, emerges when you assign a player a task that relates to this data - math or chess.

Can I suck at math, lack understanding, miscalculate and still arrive at the correct answer to a math exercise? Yes, it's unlikely but it has happened to me and it is absolutely luck. Can a random number generator come up with the same answer? Yes. Often math exercises require you to document the whole process of calculation on how you arrived at the result, which practically eliminates luck.

This is not required in chess. As I've mentioned a couple of times in this thread, chess is practically speaking an exercise where you answer a multiple choice question. The options, as in moves, are in front of you. You're allowed to use knowledge, calculation, or pick blindly to make your choice. This set of rules fundamentally introduces luck as a part of the game. Many practical examples can be examined to illustrate how the element of luck manifests, such as miscalculation or ignorance resulting in making the best move.

I like to separate this discussion from external factors that there are a limitless amount of, such as health conditions, distractions etc. Even our dynamic mental performance is heavily just down to luck, as we don't have full control over our neurotransmitters for example.

luck does not exist, then how could it be in chess?

that is still not luck, that's a happy accident

True tho theres ways you get lucky sometimes even if it's not frequent usually the better you are at something the less you need luck to win usually the worse you are at something the luckier you need to be (tho sometimes f your better at something you know how to get luckier ) so it goes both ways

If emotions weren't involved in how you play then sure there wouldn't be luck and sure if outside factors didnt effect it like computer chess isn't really luck but chess isn't 100% skill it's more like 95% skill and 5%confusion or luck at least for people

Its simply a matter of multiple definitions of chess and luck and even the word 'in'.
In what aspects of chess is there luck and in what aspects is there not luck?
Everything to do with the players and their play and efficiency of play regarding the clocks is subject to luck. Its in the game. Its not luck but its subject to luck. Luck is 'in' it.
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Obviously luck exists in the universe. As does chance.
Luck is a subset of chance - with luck requiring subjectivity. Rocks can't be lucky.
Chessplayers and chessplaying are subject to luck.
But chess positions as math are not.
As @Kotshmot just pointed out - math equations don't have 'luck' in them.
But a math student could be lucky if the equations needed in the important exam he's taking just happened to be the ones he studied the previous night. Or enough of them.
Yes the word 'in' is relevant.
Does it stimulate conversation when people take extreme positions around the more realistic middle positions and grey areas?
Often it does. Not always.

Let me explain to you what luck is, maybe it's useful in general.

Probability is a mathematical concept, that you're familiar with if you're past a certain grade at school. Probability is quantifiable uncertainty. For example, we can assign a probability to a roll of a dice. We can calculate that the probability of you getting a 6 on the next roll is exactly 1/6. Another example of probability can be taken from quantum mechanics: The probability of finding a particle in a particular state is given by the square of the wavefunction's amplitude.

Then we have the word chance. Chance refers to probability, but can be used in more general terms without mathematical precision. We can refer to the uncertainty in probabilistic events in the real world as chance. Chance is still an objective point of view to look at probability, without concern of a point of view.

Lastly the topic of the discussion, which is luck. Luck also refers to probability in real world scenarios. It goes a little further, by considering the subjective point of view of a person interacting with a probabilistic event. A simple example of this is a roll of dice, where the outcome of a probabilistic event favours the player, who rolled the bigger number. Therefore we say there is luck in rolling the dice, and the winner can be considered lucky.

As a conclusion, if there is a probabilistic event and the outcome can be viewed from a specific point of view, luck exists.

These are the fundamentals. When examining a specific case and determining whether there luck in something or not, we need to be a little more precise and consider multiple variables, such a skill. I maintain that the more deeply we investigate, we will find luck in most things.

Nope. I am not a determinist...not for this universe, in any case. Chess is a logical construct, though. Effectively, we instantiate the rules construct and then we play a game. But chess doesn't require a board, human beings, quantum mechanics or even for this universe to exist. The logical construct has no luck, except who moves first and even that determination can arguably be called "outside" the logical construct.

I don't think I said you were determinist, that wasn't the intention anyway, but rather to point out your deterministic view of chess as a... process, construct, whatever. Which I think it was an accurate assessment based on this summary of your position. And I agree with you that we can indeed isolate chess as a construct from rest of the universe for this discussion, as someone else had also pointed out before. I suppose the concept has to include the rules and the process of playing the game though, and picking a choice rom multiple options as part of the rules does not exclude luck.

We disagree, same old impasse, so no point in going on from there.

I just wanted to make it clear that I do not say there's no luck in chess because I believe in a deterministic universe and that the game results are already "pre-ordained" by the way the Big Bang took place, etc.

Not so sure since the Google quantum chip thing (googled claiming that parallel universes exist ) it might be "deterministic " but you probably could make different choices with a universe of different rules(if they are correct I have a sneaking suspicion that they might not know all the rules yet tho so they could've miscalculated )if that's the case but "luck " is more a viewpoint made with actions of living things I don't think it matters so much if it's deterministic

Google claims a lot of stuff. Their initial Alpha Zero vs. Stockfish testing, for example, which they called a match, but which was performing behind closed doors with only Google employees there. That's a test, not a match .

That's why I'm sceptical