Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

Just a disclaimer lest I be accused of flip-flopping later...

I also agree with btickler's summary of this position as "Complexity that obfuscates outcomes = luck".

...refers to a summation I made of a position that I oppose .

I agree that this argument is largely one created by the imprecision of language, but I don't agree that the majority viewpoint/perceptions of humanity as a mass must be more correct.  Rather the reverse.

On his deathbed, Coolout will be telling his grandchildren (or more likely some sibling's grandchildren) how he never lost an argument in his whole life, and how the opponents he inevitably laid waste to would concede his points and then flee from his very presence.

The grandchildren will reply:

"Yeah, we remember...sorry, but we really have to go now.  I think Mom is calling us.  Becky has to do her homework.  Get better soon!"

CooloutAC - I never stated that my hypothetical example had zero probability, what I said was it had nearly zero likelihood.  Secondly, I said the GM could be playing at his typical ability and there is still a chance he could lose the game, I'm not invoking that his skills were impaired in any way. Thirdly, I am not saying that play in chess is at all random, only that due to the complexity of the game there is a chaotic factor in predicting the outcome of every move and this introduces chance effects beyond a player's control. Now I'll quote your own definition of luck: "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions," which I interrupt as possibly meaning, as in my example, a game won mainly by the chance selection of moves and not by the relative skills of the players. I know you will argue since skill was involved, even by a low level player, there was an action initiated by that player that led to him winning the game and thus it was not luck. Perhaps the player made a move that cost him his queen and the GM snatches up the mistake not realizing that seven moves later on it turns out to be a winning sacrifice that only a super computer could have foreseen and the low level player just chances to make the right moves to checkmate. I think most people would judge his victory as luck , which is my point. I'm not saying that you are wrong, only I think the consensus of the majority of people would be the winner had a series of lucky moves.

Wake up and smell the coffee (or just listen to the preponderance of opinion)...*you* are the troll here, since day one.

P.S. You actually confirmed the sibling's grandchildren prediction.  I would say you should try to have children, because having them would completely remove your ability to be so self-centered, but having children in order to attempt to solve personal or relationship problems is always unethical in the extreme .

That's not trolling, just a dose of hard reality.

That's a pretty sensible way of looking at it. I noticed you said "almost zero probability". So it's odd that you would be instantly accused of admitting 0 probability. To me there is a very big difference. Sorta like the lottery. If it's an almost zero probability of winning the jackpot millions of people would still play it. If there was a zero probability, I'm pretty sure nobody would play. 

Sometimes I think he gets so excited just to be saying something, he forgets or gets confused about what he's saying. 

     Of course a total amateur COULD have beaten Mike Tyson or Muhammed Ali. Either one could have had a heart attack or an aneurism and dropped dead, or even a ruptured appendix, etc and gone down for the count without being touched.

     Yet such an event COULD happen, and if it did it would remain part of the sport's lore forever. Why do you have such difficulty grasping the concept that something that only has a .0001% chance of happening probably will happen once if the contest is repeated 100,000 times. Near zero is not at zero. Remember, you are only human, your proclamations do not carry the status of absolute truth, and your continuing repetition of false assertions does not at any point confer legitimacy upon them.

That also makes sense. Bad luck I would say. Given how violent boxing is it's pretty reasonable to expect injuries. Severe injuries like brain injuries or heart attack do in fact seem to be a part of boxing. Heart attacks have caused death during boxing before so even a total amateur could win with that kind of luck. 

If I had five cents for each time Big Smoke has said "so you are contradicting yourself", I could buy the aqueduct of Segovia.

If you are honestly appalled, medication might help. I'm fine with any and all of the definitions of luck. They all seem good to me. I'm sorry you got so offended that I didn't list all the complete definitions to suit your needs. I figured you could do that. You can list any definition you like, it would still apply to the points being made here. 

     Apparently it can progress extremely rapidly in particularly susceptible subjects.

It just thought of a great way for casinos or even lottery operators to make money. Semantics. Most people play based on the almost zero probability of winning. So what they could do is decrease the odds down to zero. Not almost zero, actually zero. That way they could keep all the money, never have to pay out anything because there is zero chance of winning. And if questioned, they could just say "semantics". 

     Something that happens during a boxing match isn't really part of boxing? This is like your theory that perfect games aren't part of baseball or setting world records isn't really part of track and field because these things are so rare.

     Besides, in boxing the participants ARE trying to physically damage each other.

When I ran track and cross country in school, the real athletes were the ones on the B squad. Everyone was slow, so it was more competitive. The elite runners on my school’s varsity were too good. Only one other school had more than two runners who could keep up with our top five.

Well it makes sense that you would not be willing to say it's part of the sport. Severe injuries are pretty common in boxing from what I've heard. It's two people punching each other. Like Mpaetz said, the whole point of the sport is to injure each other. So stresses on the body that cause things like brain injury or heart attacks shouldn't be a surprise. Injuries (of all types) ARE part of boxing. 

You have your way of looking at things, which prevents you from seeing what other people plainly see. It's like your comments about dice. You said you had to repeat yourself that skill plays no part in the outcome of dice. Of course the opposite is true, but that won't stop you from believing whatever it is you feel the need to believe. 

CooloutAC - Yes, we most likely will never see a very low level player beat a GM, I just used that as the most extreme example, but if we are talking mathematics we have to consider even the lowest probabilities. A very rough calculation figuring the weak player would have one in hundredth chance each move for lets say 40 moves of a winning line gives odds of one in 10 to the forty-first power! However it does happen not too infrequently that a players with a lower ratings happens by a chance move to beat a higher rated player and it is the same principle involved of what might be called luck, even though a greater amount of skill was involved. Look, I don't contest the validity of your way of looking at this issue, I just think there are different opinions just as logical. Also, if my improbable scenario ever did happen, I'm sure most reports of it would call it luck!  

Well I would agree that it's a human perspective, because we get to define what words and concepts mean. But I would disagree with your personal conception of luck being the standard way most people understand it.

Because, if something being hypothetically calculable ruled out luck then, for example, if the universe is Deterministic we couldn't call someone lucky for winning the lottery. After all, the numbers that fall out of the machine would in principle be computable, even if no human or computer was capable of the feat. A hypothetical entity playing the lottery at "the highest skill level" would win every time.

Right now, we don't know for sure if the universe is Deterministic or not. So, following your definition through, we should throw up our hands and say we are not sure whether a lottery winner is lucky or not.

This isn't what people mean by luck though. The normal meaning of luck is just when events that you didn't predict go your way.

If you're playing against someone inexperienced and who doesn't know what move to make when, then he/she is essentially making semi-random moves. So yes, luck does exist in chess.

What do you mean it doesn't happen during a boxing match? The analogy was brought up about an amateur winning a boxing match if the professional drops dead of a heart attack. Very unlikely, but it's possible. And there are cases where boxers have in fact dropped dead of a heart attack, during the boxing match. 

If it happened during the match, it happened during the match. Why say it doesn't? Just because it's rare doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Nor does it mean it's not part of the event. You probably should have picked a better example, since injuries (even severe ones) ARE part of boxing. Injuries, to use your words, are by DESIGN, part of the sport. 

To drive this thread back to the original topic, luck is, arguably, kind of a part of chess. It's true, you do make your own luck by trying to get your opponent to mess up, but them messing up could also count as luck