Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

The "external add ons" are not necessary for chess to exist, but it is impossible to play online chess without computers and internet connection. Players would not sign up for chess tournaments if they had no idea how long games might take and when rounds 2 (and subsequent) might be held. These games, which are what most posters here are discussing, must have an enforceable time framework to exist. All parties to such games agree that violation of time rules will result in the loss of the game. It is not always possible for arbiters to determine and make adjustments to correct for unusual reasons that might cause time forfeits. When the victor is decided by time forfeit resulting from random factors outside the control of either player that's just bad luck for the loser (good luck for the winner.) The fact that such occurrences run counter to everyone's desires for a fair and equal contest does not mean such things can never happen.

Yet I have seen people "driving to the grocery store" stop to fix a flat tire or call AAA for assistance. Most baseball games are played in parks or empty lots without designated hitters, pitch clocks, or "ghost runners"--do you believe that means that Major League Baseball results aren't really baseball games? The overwhelming majority of basketball games are played casually in parks, playgrounds, or gyms without clocks or referees (non-players making crucial game-deciding decisions), so are NBA games not producing "real" basketball results?

When I walk a couple of blocks down the hill to the nearest commercial street there are sometimes chess players at sidewalk tables behind the cafes--using clocks. When I pass Telegraph Ave and Haste St in Berkeley there are always several chess games going on--with clocks. When I went to Jack London Square in Oakland on Sundays during the pandemic some brave souls were gathered to play chess--we used clocks. When I was in Chicago a couple of years ago the hustlers in Grant Park were challenging passersby to play chess games for $10--using clocks. I don't believe that the great majority of chess players (who probably play a very much smaller majority--if not a minority--of chess games) think that chess players that do use clocks are not achieving results "in chess".

You don't believe that time forfeits are real "in chess" results, but FIDE, all national chess federations, every recognized world champion, all online sites, all tournament organizers, and the overwhelming majority of chess players apparently disagree. I feel that the balance of credibility weighs substantially against you on this point.

The rules they agree to are not chess principles, they are rules for participation in a human arranged structure that accomodates a chess game. How to distinguish? By not participating in a chess game, you get awarded a loss, even though you never played chess.. You merely promised you would and they punished you within the rules of the structure you signed up for. Still.. no chess actually took place, those two things are separate from each other. Thus, a result ruled by an arbiter within a tournament structure does not equal a result of a chess game.

Chess IS a game, and must be structured to accommodate human participation in order to exist. That situations may arise in which a third party, accepted by both players, needs to decide a matter in dispute or that falls outside ideal or usual circumstances, relying on previously-delineated principles and procedures (also accepted by both parties) does not mean that such a result is not the actual result of that specific chess game.

Should you contract to perform some task at a certain time and place in order to receive some benefit and then fail to appear you will forfeit the benefit.

I feel the opposite.

People that lump in anything that can effect the world at large into their concept of chess lack credibility. I'll prove my point by bringing up the opposite of my position. Can you, honestly, name a single thing in a human chess player's existence that is *not* potentially part of a game chess if it occurs within the duration of a chess game in your estimation? Anything...literally anything. It's my contention that if you cannot, then you are not describing chess or a game at all. You are describing existence as a whole.

Is a correspondence chess player's entire life during a years long game all part of the their game of chess?

Follow this scenario:

A kid is playing basketball at his high school with some other kids. He's just futzing around waiting because a football game his friend is playing in starts in an hour on the field across the street, and he's supposed to tell him some tips about why his friend's shoulderpads pinch all the time, which distracts his friend while he's playing.

So, he plays basketball, 2 on 2, and he and his buddy are about to win if they make the next basket (first to 20 points). He shoots a long shot, and the ball goes off the rim at a weird angle, bouncing a long way and rolling into the street, towards the football field. The kid starts trotting over to get the ball.

A text comes in..."dude, it's15 minutes 'til kickoff, where are you?". "Omw", he texts back. He slows to a walk. Another text comes in immediately after from another friend..."Some doofus is playing the Grob against me in the skittles room, what is that line you showed me, my clock is running...". He types "g4" but before he can expand on the line, a third text comes in from his friend who is on a nature day cruise in the Arctic Sea with his family. What the heck is he texting for right now? He hits send on "g4" and intends to follow it up in a what that one in second. Must be important...the kid is barely aware of the steps he is taking at this point. "OMG, you won't believe this! There's a pod of narwhals by the boat...one of them is catching rings we are tossing...with his horn! How is the football game going? Hurry up, I want to throw some more rings before the narwhals take off...".

He stops, and starts typing back "I told you Sunday it is was daylight savings, dude, the game hasn't started yet. At that moment, a piece of fluff from a dandelion blows into his nose, and jerks back his head too far and ends up taking a step back. A school bus driven by a distracted bus driver who is thinking about some Email he has to send to the Department of Education to let them know 5 things he did this week hits the kid and turns him into a red splat on the asphalt.

Now, by your statements past and present, it would have to be your contention that:

- The guilty dandelion is part of: basketball, football, chess, and ring-toss games with Narwhals.

(it affected all of the outcomes)

- Benjamin Franklin is part of: basketball, football, chess, and Narwhal ring toss.

(for championing daylight savings time)

- Elon Musk is part of: basketball, football, chess, and Narwhal ring-toss, and every other game that anyone who works for the US government participates in if they think about his Email at any microsecond of their game participation.

(for starting the Email campaign)

This is a flawed position, I think. You cannot distinguish between a golf ball and a gas giant if you do not draw any lines when defining what is "part of" something, and leave it open to interpretation and circumstance.

"Well, today this happened for the first tme ever, but it was during a chess game, so now I guess that's part of chess..."

Your post is arguing things not stated by me. I said nothing about tournament results/time forfeits not being "real" outcomes. I said that tournaments rules and time forfeits are not part of the game of chess itself, and that agreements that cause cessation of play prior to a completed outcome (checkmate, stalemate, or draw via insufficient material) are not really part of chess, but outside it. They are grafted on to govern exceptions (allowed/intended or not) that cause the game to terminate before it is played out.

It's a pretty clear distinction. By your reasoning, if any subset of players, including theoretically two players, agree to yodel the alphabet every time a bishop moves, then alphabet yodeling is part of the basic game of chess.

Incorrect. Alphabet yodeling would only be part of THAT SPECIFIC CAME of chess, and ONLY if poor alphabet yodeling would immediately cause the loss of the game no matter what the position on the board was (or any other factor).

If something unusual is the sole decisive factor--causing undisputable win/loss--could you consider that factor "luck in chess".

But this doesnt logically conflict with what I said.

Me saying the human created structure accodomating a game and the game itself being things to consider separate from each other.. and you saying the latter is necessary for humans to play conveniently.. Are not mutually exclusive.

If that's your definition, then it seems not to be useful at all. If there's luck in chess, then it's either there all the time, or it can't be considered part of *the* game of chess, i.e. all instances of chess.

Instances of chess games are unique sets of moves. Each such unique set of moves is a game, regardless of players. If Fischer and Judit Polgar play a game of chess, and you and your best friend play the same game at a tournament move for move as a joke, then both pairs of players have played in the same game of chess. That unique game is comprised of the moves and game states (castling rights, etc.). When you record this game in a PGN, you stamp it with player names and a time/location, which is like an orchestra that is playing Beethoven's 5th. You can identify a specific performance, but Beethoven's 5th is still Beethoven's 5th. That game of chess, which is a unique instance, has no luck in it. You are attaching luck to the players and trying to piggyback it along for the ride.

When a violinist breaks a string during Beethoven's 5th, do you then say the piece of music has bad luck? Or do you say that the violinist had bad luck?

This should have become a lot more obvious to people with the advent of computer chess, by the way.

How many chess games occur without two players deciding to play a game? No players=no chess game. No internet=no online chess game. No tournament organizer=no tournament games. The participants and the structure of the competition are essential elements in chess games. That many games of chess are played face-to-face does not mean that online games are not actually chess. Games CAN be played outside of normal rules--one player can give their opponent odds of pawn & move, or even a whole piece. Each specific game is played under whatever rules/conditions the players agree to. Violations of those rules/conditions can result in loss.

If you wish to discuss the concepts of chess without reference to players that's OK. If you talk about actual games including actual players, the players and the conditions under which they choose to play must be part of the discussion.

Players are necessary for the game to exist, we all know that.. It is just a simple matter of definition that we separate the game of chess and the dynamic conditions the players may face during a game. If the tournament structure would be chess.. luck would arguably be a factor already regarding pairings, as they would be usually determined randomly. However, it is not chess and thus not 'luck in chess'..

The problems of the definition you propose have been demonstrated in multiple ways.. If anything that influences the result is considered an 'in game factor', the list is endless.. And 'skill in chess' would include ridiculous things such as device maintenance and sabotage.

Dio--I apologize. I was interrupted by visitors, didn't complete my answer, and just now returned.

A couple of points:

If something unusual decides the victor/vanquished it is only "luck" if it is something neither participant could have prevented.

The whole basketball game analogy is nonsense. All that happened was that some chucklehead wandered into traffic because they were paying attention to their phone rather than their actual surroundings. None of the other things you bring up had any effect on the basketball game. The three other players could have finished playin 2 on 1 had they wished, recruited someone else to join them, or come to some other mutually-agreeable arrangement.

Luck does NOT have to be present in every chess game to be present in any one chess game. It would be unlucky were you or I to be struck by lightning while walking to the grocery down the street even though we had made that same walk many times before without incident. Or it would be lucky for us to open our mailbox tomorrow to find an unexplained $10,000 in cash, even though finding money was not part of getting our daily mail.

If you don't consider outcomes due to tournament rules to be "part of chess" I again point out that you are in a very small minority among chess players and I will continue to agree with all chess organizations and the overwhelming majority of players rather than with you.

If your goal is to align with the majority, then Google or ask an AI what games are most commonly considered to not have any luck in them. You're kind of borked either way.

The basketball/football/chess/ring toss game scenario is far from nonsense. In each case, the outcomes of the all the games were materially affected by the kid's lack of ability to come through due to "luck". This is the very definition of how you see luck affecting chess in your posts, it's just a bit (and really, not much since you are in the "potential lightning strikes are part of luck in chess" camp) more abstracted to make the point and for humor.

No, I rely on my own reasoning to formulate my own opinions, thank-you. You are the one that claimed that your judgement was correct because most players do not use clocks when playing chess games.

I have consistently maintained that should a player's actions or abilities be the cause of success (win/loss) in a particular game no luck was involved.

That simplification of my position takes it beyond the reasonable. I did not hinge my judgment/position on any statement about clocks.

Thought of my favorite thread as soon as I saw this Reti quote: "Chess is a fighting game which is purely intellectual and includes chance"

He joins a long list of master players below who understand the role of luck in nearly everything we do in life. Afterall, if a chess game is purely reflective of player's ability (e.g. "the stronger player is the one who won the game, since each player was completely in control of their move selection"), then one must acquiesce that the outcome of a coinflip in a vacuum is also purely reflective of a flipper's ability, since they are also in complete control of how they flip the coin.

1) Carlsen himself said here that, “I think the world cup is pretty overrated seeing as it’s such a small sample size so it sort of annoys me when titles are always appreciated so much even though that particular title can be a lot of luck or at least some luck”
2) Fabiano wrote here that, "There is definitely an element of chance in any individual chess game or tournament"
3) Giri here (around 35:26) said , "In this event in the last two days I have to say I've never been this lucky before, it really fell my way like more than ever. Indeed it was just like a pure coincidence that I managed to win in the end.”
4) Finegold here (around 6:41) said, "There's a lot of luck in chess, which is hard to explain to the gawking rabble”
5) Korobov says around 1:15 here that, "Okay, that was a big fight. We were lucky of course, but without luck, no serious result is possible… unless you’re Magnus Carlsen.”
6) Benjamin Bok, after swindling a stalemate against Carlsen, wrote, ““I did not see the stalemate idea from afar, I just got as lucky as you can be”

Seems like they all grasp that since chess requires the selection of a move, and there only finitely many legal moves to choose from, that the selection of a good/bad move is not a wholly representative expression of player skill. They also likely understand that when conditioning on player strength, there are only a small number of "critical" positions in any single game-- two similarly matched GMs would both filter down to the same few candidate moves but might end up selecting different moves from their candidates. Hence why the long-run average of two similarly matched players will reflect their ELO imbalance, but the outcome of any single game is indeterminable (this is pretty much the definition of luck; the behavior is exactly that of a coin flip).

@LeeEuler

This is what I'd expect from someone who has spent their life with competetive chess. They take pride in their decision making, but still acknowledge the reality that they can't and wont rely on pure skill on every decision.

I don't agree with the last sentence though. I'd say a game is indeterminable due to inevitable variance in human performance, elo reflecting the average output. Luck is not a necessity in that function although in reality we know it plays a role as well.

Yes. Through fatigue, one could overlook a desparation mate attempt.

Sometimes, If You Blunder And Your Opponent Doesn't Notice. It's Definitely Luck Or Your Opponent Is Trash