Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

     Had you greater mastery of English grammar you would have known that the definition referred to was the one just mentioned. In fact it's plain that you did understand it to mean just that and are again only looking for any excuse to downgrade others to make you look (and feel?) superior.

     And you just promised (1152) to completely ignore me. Just can't hold back whenever you see a chance to hurl an insult, can you?

You are lucky if you don't meet a cheater in an online Swiss tournament.

Still the same arguments...

Luck and skill are not two extremes of one spectrum...they are separate spectrums:

Higher luck, lower or no skill games:

Coin toss, Rock-Paper-Scissors, Life, Candyland

Lower luck, lower skill games:

Tic Tac Toe

Higher luck, medium skill games:

5 Card Draw Poker, Monopoly

Lower luck, medium skill games:

Checkers, Connect 4

Higher luck, higher skill games:

Texas Hold 'Em

Lower luck, higher skill games:

Chess, Go, etc.

Proving the point indirectly:

Exercise 1:  Subtract skill from Chess by making a rule change and explain

Exercise 2:  Add luck to Chess by making a rule change and explain

Exercise 3:  Add skill to Chess by making a rule change and explain

Exercise 4:  Subtract luck from Chess by making a rule change and explain

You might have to think a while, but exercises 1 to 3 are not too bad.  Now try exercise 4...

So, you do admit there is luck in Chess.  But it's as skill-based as the ruleset can possibly allow for, ergo, a skill-based game.

What's suspect is your ability to understand that my arguments have not changed at all.  Sadly, you cannot blame chess, either...your brain was already that way before you learned the game .

Red Herring

Please tell us you are not this obtuse.  How does listing an exercise for the reader to do constitute taking a side?  How exactly does listing Exercises 1 to 3 contradict anything unless the exercises are performed and results discussed?

The exercises presented, if performed, allow the performer to come to their own conclusions.  Exercise 4 *should* prove the most difficult to complete, implying there is not any more luck in Chess to subtract, which has been my consistent position since the beginning.  If you cannot follow that, you really don't belong in this discussion.

You haven't taught me anything useful, ever.  I can't speak for others, but...not sure you have it in you.  

If you can logically, step by step, connect my posts to #1160 in any way that implies your post resulted in my posts, I will concede.  This is your big chance...for someone to actually concede instead of you pretending they have conceded .  Good luck.

Post 1160 content for reference:

"That part of my definition is literallly the first thing that comes up on google word for word.  I add the second half to put the definition of skill into it as an antithesis.     If ones actions were influenced by luck,  then it wouldn't be ones own actions.   What you are describing is not possible unless an element of luck was in the game which dictates the action that must be taken.  LIke dice or randomly dealt cards to determine moves.  This is the reaosn I add the antithesis you are ignoring to emphasize such an  action would not be influenced by one self or by skill.    And such actions do not exist in chess which is why chess is different from other board games."

     Exactly. YOU add to the definition and expect everyone else to agree with your "more complete" as dogma. You regularly claim other posters opinions to be invalid as they do not conform to the "official" Coolout definition. No one argues with your using your own interpretation of the word to explain your opinion. No one believes in your right to declare their posts "laughable" or "ridiculous" or whatever other put down comes to mind because they don't subscribe to your linguistic authority.

     I believe New York City has a good library system. Find a copy of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and look up the word "luck". You will find definitions with many shades of meaning, explanations of the world's origin and development, and examples of it's usage. Teams of eminent scholars have been researching and updating this dictionary for mare than 150 years and I assure that it is far more thorough and reliable than "the first thing that pops up on Google".

Well, this is an arguementive forum with a lot of misunderstandings and quibbling over definitions and interputations! Almost as bad as the "True or False Chess is a Draw with Best Play from Both Sides", where the argument has gone on for years, only in that case there is no proof either way, but here I would think it a simple matter of definitions and correctly applying them. I try not to chime in unless I have something new to add to the discussion.

I don't have the Oxford, but do have a 1939 Unabridged Webster's Dictionary, the largest and heaviest book I own. Here is what it gives as the first definition of "luck", other entries refer to omens, charms or a type of plant: " That which happens to one seemingly by chance; an event, good or ill, affecting one's interest happiness, and deemed casual; a course or series of such events regarded as occurring by chance; chance; hap; fate; fortune; often, one's habitual or characteristic fortune; as good, bad, ill, or hard luck; as luck would have it."

btickler's list of exercises is an interesting challenge:

Exercise 1: Subtract skill from Chess by making a rule change and explain
Fisher Random Chess (Chess9600) - randomizes the set up of pieces. This creates 960 starting setups making it more difficult to memorize openings or rely on familiar game tactics .

Exercise 2: Add luck to Chess by making a rule change and explain
Double Chess - each side has two full armies and it is played on a 12x16 board. The added complexity would make it harder to foresee much depth into the game. My contention is not knowing completely the outcome of your move adds the element of "luck," at least as how I define it.

Exercise 3: Add skill to Chess by making a rule change and explain
Eliminate castling and curtail the powers of the queen to simplify the game and make it more predictable.

Exercise 4: Subtract luck from Chess by making a rule change and explain
Any of the minichess variants, such as Gardner Chess played on a 5x5 board. With less pieces and squares analysis would be made easier. Some of these mini variants are solved games, so with the winning algorithm a game could be played perfectly with no luck at all involved! Not very interesting knowing the outcome.

Ok

Thanks. 

I employ a more game design-ish/systems analysis driven definition of luck...that is, a random factor that cannot be affected by any amount of skill or lack thereof by the players (both players, thus a choice made by one player cannot be "luck" for the other player, because the first player made a choice that applies skill no matter how great or miniscule...the argument against this is that a player can just make (pseudo) random moves on purpose...but at that point they are not playing chess anymore, ala the monkey or earthquake examples).

The definition you pulled is more poetic.  If luck is broadened to the "as luck would have it" level, it becomes fuzzy and non-descriptive, like the word "love", or the word "snow" to Inuit people, that have a dozen more precise terms for it. 

By tying it to complexity, luck becomes magic.  That is, the assignment of randomness or supernatural forces to something too complex to understand.  Take a beginner, who has never seen a chessboard or pieces before (but has otherwise lived a normal life, not someone who was sequestered since birth), and is taught how the pieces move and the goal of checkmate, then asked to play white in their first game.  The first move they choose is not luck...and if you were to perform a case study on this, you would find that the moves e4, d4, Nf3, Nc3, a4, and h4 would be chosen more often than any pawn to the 3rd rank, or b4, c4, f4, g4, Na3, or Nh3.  Because that first time player is already capable of applying skill, carried over from other games and endeavors...they listened to how the pieces move, and they gather/sense certain things:

- If the pawn is allowed to move two squares only initially, that is likely an advantage I should employ, because special moves are usually more powerful 

- If the pawns are blocking my queen/rook/bishop from getting out, then I should move them first, because freedom of movement is important

Etc.

Clarke's 3rd Law:  "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" can also be applied to "luck" by the more poetic definitions:

"The perceived cause of any occurrence whose actual causes are sufficiently complex appears to be luck" -Btickler's Corollary

You had it right when you talked about quantum fluctuations, which are the closest thing to something we could prove to be true luck in our universe.  That's impractical for humans, though, stuck on a dust mote imprisoned by gravity...so we need to assign a reasonable threshold.  The different assignments of that threshold on a case by case basis is the source of this thread's 60 pages.  My threshold for any case presented is the absolute minimum that can be ascribed to luck, by default.

btickler - I think your definition of "luck" is actually more appropriate in regard to games, chess is a game of strategy and no matter how low the skill you cannot blame "bad luck" for a loss. I just feel compelled to look at the question in what I think is a more mathematical way. So a "chess game" could be any series of legal moves that results in a win, loss or draw, even one constructed from random moves! Not fully knowing the consequences of a move, to me, implies there was an element of chance in the move selection, regardless of whatever degree of skill was employed. Any degree of uncertainty to an outcome brings up the question of probabilities and if you extract a win from the odds against you it could be said you were "lucky".

As a science fiction fan I like that you brought up Clarke's law! I actually met Clarke in person back in the early 70's!

I guess scholars wrote more poetically back in the 30's. Note that in the phrase "as luck would have it" the word was written for some reason in italics. I am also not sure what "hap" is, maybe something to do with "happenstance?"

I was playing chess games back in grade school. I am sure I had some concepts of strategy, but probability used every possible opening move at some point, even pawn to rook three.

I did not mention "luck" as a supernatural agency and I am open minded enough to consider this a option. I had a friend who driving past a race track suddenly got a urge to bet on a particular horse and had a big win! Was it just chance, or something else? I also remember playing multiple games in an all night session against a Native American friend, perhaps my mind was just tired, but a one point I imagined a line of War Chiefs behind him helping him in in the game! So could you channel the spirit of a departed grandmaster to help in the game? Is there such a thing as a "Lady Luck" whose influence would grant a greater likelihood of winning the game? Does it help to say a prayer? I'm afraid the answers to these questions are beyond my ken.

The ancient Romans believed in Fortuna ("Lady Luck"), one of the pantheon of gods/goddesses that they worshipped; but they, like ancient sailors, were a superstitious lot. Suffice it to say that, after having viewed this rather verbose and vitriolic debate, "LUCK"--i.e., random chance--exists in LIFE, but not so much in Chess...various algorithms are employed by Chess.com to determine not only the pieces' color (so no true "luck" there!), but also the various starting configurations in a given Chess960 position.

Writing about superstitions after mentioning a belief in gods, the word “but” seems wrong. The two sets of beliefs described are wholly consistent.

Yes, I said early on before your arrival that I was looking at luck in a game design context which makes sense for this thread.  It's a narrower definition, for sure.  The comment about the 30s phrasing...luck is personified in that context, which is not really any different than ascribing lightning to Zeus, or Thor.  So far, humanity has not uncovered any Gods of Lightning, but has explained a lot of stuff.

My spirit totem is hawk, according to my conversations with my best friend since childhood who is half Lakota Sioux...it has an appealing description:

"The Hawk

In Native American cultures the hawk represents a

messenger.  It often appears in our life when we need

to pay attention to the subtle messages found in our

surroundings and from those we come in contact with.

As with all messages received it is important to

recognize its underlying truth.  Because there are so

many varieties of hawk its messages vary and can

affect all levels of our psyche.

One thing that all hawks have in common is the skill

to move between the seen and unseen realms gracefully

connecting both worlds together.  Their acute vision

compliments this ability and their discriminating

nature keeps them out of harms way.  The broader

vision of the hawk allows them to see what the future

holds.  In man this symbolizes prophetic insight.  If

this medicine is underdeveloped a tendency towards

over analyzing everything is common.  In so doing,

clear vision is lost.  Those who hold this totem

should remember to keep their analytical mind under

control and not allow it to run wild. 

The hawk has many foraging techniques.  The most

typical in their pursuit of prey is swiftly following

the animal's efforts to escape.  Once the hawk has

secured the prey with its powerful talons, the bird

dismembers it with its sharply pointed, strong beak.

In man, this suggests that we can run but we cannot

hide from our destiny.  Sooner of later it will catch

up with us.

The destiny of all humankind is to awaken from their

spiritual amnesia and realign with the original

intention of their soul.  When the hawk flies into our

life we will be asked to evaluate who we have become

and rip out the threads of our self created illusions.

This enables our inner truth to surface."

If you read the description and look at my body of posts, you might go "hmmm..."

I have encountered hawks at a number of pivotal moments over the decades, and I have always had a hawk statue from Russia I bought when I was a kid sitting over my desk.  I joined the Air Force, and I had hawk and eagle statues and pictures, and a hawk belt buckle, all chosen by me because I like them a lot for some reason long before I or my friend ever knew about spirit totems.  CooloutAC says I am a crippled old bird...

...but all of these things are actually just examples of confirmation bias.  Fun to think about, but not meaningful or true.

"When the hawk flies into our life we will be asked to evaluate who we have become

and rip out the threads of our self created illusions"...take note, Optimissed, Coolout, et al .

my computer is lagging cuz of this

It's PornHub, you need to close it when you are not...you know.

wtf