Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

I consider myself lucky that I’ve put enough work into my skill development that I can win against a large majority of chess players. Unfortunately, I’m a terrible hunter.

     Of course there is luck in sports. Have you never seen a deflected pass wind up in the hands of a receiver who couldn't have reached the ball otherwise? Have you never seen a soccer ball carom off a player whose back was turned to the play and then bounce into the goal? Have you never seen a routine ground ball hit a divot or pebble and get past the infielder for a base hit? Have you never seen a wild golf shot hit a tree or rock and fly back onto the green? Have you never seen a basketball player come from out of nowhere to block a shot or a pass only to have the ball bounce right to a player under the basket for an easy score?

     What is the skill involved in these sort of plays? Perhaps they are caused by psychic powers? Or maybe they are like 64-yard field goals or holes-in-one and don't count as part of the sport because they are so rare.

     Once again you just declare that such things aren't lucky but the only reason you provide is "because I say so". You admit that the ground ball is part of the game, and I've seen plenty of bad hops fly completely out of the fielder's reach. Being "more skillful" to field the ball could only mean developing the skill of instantly making your arms three feet longer. And the soccer player scoring a goal with a poor kick because of an unintended deflection--how is scoring a goal "poor skill"? Sometimes when two basketball payers get their hands on the ball it goes off in directions neither had planned on. And claiming that a wild golf shot hitting an obstacle on the course and winding up in a favorable position is Skill is totally ridiculous. 

     Yes, all these things and many others are "part of the game" and many happen due to the actions of the players, but the results are contrary to the intentions these highly-skilled atheletes had in performing said actions. Their skills didn't cause the results, just the opposite. Some have that the opposite of skill is luck, so let's call it that.

Proving luck in sports vs. chess is easy enough.  The field of play, the weather, etc. *are* part of the game.  If a field goal kicker in football carefully assesses the ribbons on the goalposts to determine wind direction and intensity, clears the ground with his shoe and examines the turf, checks his shoelaces, and otherwise applies every skill he possesses to mitigate factors that might impede the field goal, then runs up and kicks the ball straight as an arrow allowing for the wind direction and speed, and then a gust of wind in the other direction causes the ball to sail wide right...then that is luck.  Because human beings cannot teach themselves to control the weather.

Chess is a different story, it exists in a realm where there is no weather, nor even necessarily any physical environment whatsoever.  The rules are understood and completely immutable.  It's a game of Perfect Information.

     You continue to repeat that things that happen because of human actions can't be called lucky. Rolling dice is a human action. Does this mean that "Chutes and Ladders" must be classified as a "skill" game?

     Yet you claim that random, unintentional results from deflected balls in sports are to be classified as skill rather than luck. A basketball player blindly saving a ball from going out of bounds is hoping that luck will put it into his teammate's hands rather than an opponent's. How is that different than trying to roll a six to hit a ladder and instead rolling a four and hitting a chute?

Exactly right. This is similar to what I mentioned in my post #1953 

"You [Coolout] think a person guessing in Deal or No Deal is lucky, because you presuppose that Deal Or No Deal is 100% luck, whereas you think a person guessing in chess is skillful, because you presuppose that chess is 100% skill. The way you apply your interpretation of the definition is selective."

And his reply when asked what he would do to test if something was luck if he didn't already presuppose that it was? From his post #1963

"And thats the thing. You don't have to test anything to know. That would overcomplicate things and be a waste of time."  

     And I gave you a answer as to how each of your "points" was total horsebleep. All you can do is say "my opinion is right and therefore yours must be wrong as it differs from mine". 

     Refer to #2029. I realize that was about an hour ago, longer than your memory for detail seems to last. And an athlete desperately swatting a pass or shot away just to prevent a score, with NO idea where the ball will wind up, is hoping for a lucky result as surely as the child playing Chutes and Ladders.

     And if the little girl could go back in time her dice roll would be different. Slapping the ball out of the hands of a player shooting a lay-up and having NO IDEA of where it will go after it caroms off the rim or backboard is taking a chance. He thinks there is near certainty the lay-up will go in but is willing to risk the smaller chance of an unlucky outcome (falling into an opponents hands for a slam dunk) or even good luck (his team recovering the ball). He's hoping for luck. Of course, had he the skill to have grown a foot taller with the ability to jump another foot into the air, he could have completely smothered the shot.

Plenty of examples have been presented that show case luck in both sports and chess, it just triggers gibberish answers that bring the conversation to wrong tracks. No progress can be made in this conversation mate.

yeah just like how you brought absolutely no point to this forum just sayin

bro this has nothing to do with chess ur wafflin

     Another load of crap. Again you take a single example and claim that I am saying that that is what always happens. Sometimes a player can control where a blocked shot goes, sometimes he barely get a hand on it and hopes for the best, considering that he thinks the ball is very likely to go into the basket should he let it go. 

     Sometimes the ball rolls into the hoop anyway, sometimes it goes out of bounds and the other team gets the ball back, sometimes it falls into the hands of an opponent for an even easier shot, sometimes a teammate grabs it. The blocker is willing to take a chance and hope for a favorable outcome (good luck).

     YOU are the one who claimed there is NO luck in sports. Every athlete and coach says there are times "we just couldn't catch a break today" or "we were lucky to get away with a win there". Unpredictable oddball bits of luck frequently happen in sports. That it doesn't happen every time doesn't mean it never occurs. If it does sometimes happen there IS some luck in sports.

This comment is not directed at you, since you probably are not able to comprehend it. So it's directed at those who also think there is no luck in chess. 

To accept that there is no luck in chess is to accept that there is no luck at all. But the word does exist, because it describes random chance events that are not predictable or expected. Lots of examples have been given describing luck in chess. And there are countless more in sports. Again I don't expect you to understand it because you believe something can't be a sport if an element of luck is involved. 

Golf for example has a great deal of luck. A hole in one, a favorable bounce off a tree, even an animal coming along and swiping your ball. Golf probably has more rules in it than any other sport. The rulebook is about 600 pages. MANY of the rules, and rulings, have to do with luck. 

The main rule surrounding luck is 19.1. It's called rub of the green. Things like the flag pole, a round boundary marker, etc. are randomizing devices. They are intentionally round, so that the results of hitting them are random. Hitting a boundary marker from 200 yards away is not skill. The ball may deflect back into play, with a very favorable outcome, or it could just as easy deflect out of play, costing at least one stroke. Which side of the post a person hits is pure luck. Random chance. So the reasoning that someone hitting the post was caused by human action, therefore it's not luck, is beyond ridiculous. Because if that's the case, the word luck wouldn't even exist because nothing would be considered lucky. 

Language is for efficient communication of ideas in a timely manner.  The word "luck" exists separate from "chance" because it is a convenient catch-all...that is, it is much easier and shorter to say "that was a lucky 3-pointer to win the game" than to say:

"That 3-pointer was a great shot, the arc and aim were almost perfect at release, but the blocking defender didn't work out quite enough last week...they were half a step short, and their right pinky only barely touched the ball in flight, which is why the ball touched the hoop going in instead of being a swish.  It being an away game, the shooter had noticed during warmups that a red warning marker painted on the arena stairs was a good line-up sight marker to use for his favorite 3-point position.  The shooter ate well the day before, and although he had an argument with his girlfriend that morning, he maintained concentration and focus for this shot even through screaming fans and seeing the clock at 0.3 in the corner of his eye."

It's sometimes easier to argue a point by flipping it on its head.  Imagine an alien species lands on earth that is from a planet where evolved agility/dexterity among the animal life there is off the charts.  When these aliens play golf, it's 18 holes in one.  Bowling, 300.  Archery, all bullseyes.  Pitching, 180mph fastballs, curveballs, and sliders that end dead center of the catcher mitts ever time. Ice skating, octuple jumps without a fall, ever.

So, how do you get a failed result from such a creature in a sport?

(1) You can pair them with a team that is not similarly endowed, introducing lack of skill.

(2) Things outside the realm of what such a creature can reasonably perceive or control can come into play, introducing luck (forces outside any reasonable semblance of control of the players involved).

These are not on the same spectrum, and lack of skill != luck.  The spectrum of skill runs from zero skill to perfect skill.  The spectrum of luck runs from zero effects on the game from outside factors to a game completely outside the control of the players due to external factors.  You can have high skill, low luck games (Chess, Go).  You can have low skill, low luck games (Tic-Tac-Toe).  You can have low skill, high luck games (Life, Candyland).  You can have high skill, high luck games (Texas Hold Em). 

In game design, you usually try for the least amount of luck you can manage for a good game, because arbitrary results are not fun for players playing a game.  They are fine in Mad Libs, though.  If you design a game and it is too rigid, easy, and/or boring, that's when the game designers add luck.  Chess evolved and survived because it is a game that is not too rigid, or easy, or boring, and the introduction of luck was never needed.  Variants that have luck have been introduced endlessly, and fail to make the slightest dent.  Chess is not arbitrary...in a game of Perfect Information with the absolute minimum elements of luck, a GM will beat a beginner so often that even if you posited a "random" win, you can't really ever get there in any practical sense.  Case in point...my father taught me chess and beat me every single game for 10+ years straight.  When I finally beat him, we traded a game or two, and then I was stationed overseas.  When I saw him again, I was beating him every single game, and in "simuls" with by brother-in-law also playing me.  It's 25 years later and he hasn't beaten me since.  Where's the luck?

Chess is a different animal.  The playing field is non-physical.  It can be a wooden board and pieces, it can be a virtualized board and pieces online, or it can be nothing but thoughts in the heads of players playing blindfold.  The complexity of our universe is narrowed to a tiny set of rules, and the laws of physics do not apply inside a game of chess.  Players drive this logical construct, and the rules are simple enough that while a human being cannot calculate 25 moves out, any single move that is upcoming is fully capable of being understood (I'm not saying chess moves are always understood, even by GMs, but they are capable of being understood by the human brain if the proximate reasoning is laid bare).  It's only venturing into the horizons that players (humans and engines) cannot see the reasoning.  But that is simply a lack of skill, because when the those horizons come closer...bingo, they are understandable.  In this way, the definition given a few times here of "people saying they are lucky are simply expressing a perception based on hindsight" is accurate.  That's not luck except in the most poetic and shorthand sense the word can be taken in.  But in the context of game design, it's not luck.

Problem in this lack of skill vs luck comparison at the end of your post is that they don't contradict each other at all.

If I make a move that I don't understand at all but it happens to be the best move, I haven't shown any skill but rather lack of it. My opponent also did not see the power of the move and let it happen, therefore its also a display of lack of skill. Skill level of the players hasn't been shown to differ, yet we have a winner. Chance, luck, whatever you want to call it is the decisive element in this scenario, coexisting with lack of skill by two even players. You don't have to design a random factor in the game, luck will always exist everywhere.

Whether you would change your actions if you could go back in time is a red herring. After all, under this concept of skill vs luck, then playing the lottery is skill -- if you could go back in time you'd choose the winning numbers.

Skill and lack of skill are a spectrum, and in human terms, a spectrum with quasi-asymptotes at either end ...it's very rare for perfect skill or complete lack of skill to exist.

On a percentage scale, even if one hypothetical player has 2% skill, the 3% opponent can win the day.  Your statement "if I make a move that I don't understand at all" is also exceedingly rare.  Even a first time player often responds to e4 with e5.  They often move their knight towards the center of the board by preference.  They often move pawns to open lines for pieces, and this becomes apparent when they immediately follow up by moving one of those pieces. 

That's skill.  A very minor amount of skill, borrowed and adapted from other games/endeavors, but non-zero skill nonetheless.

Skill is also a range from move to move, not a discrete value.  There's a powerful gravitational pull towards the center of the range, but sometimes anomalies occur...ergo Karpov resigning in 11 moves one time in his professional career, et al.  Nobody, including probably Karpov, will know exactly what distracted him, but something did.  It was not random chance, and you can't blame it on luck.  

Think of it more like biting your cheek while eating.  Your brain knows how to chew, the food is not hard or unwieldy, etc.  But somehow, you bite your cheek anyway.  Not luck.  A lapse of skill, one time out of thousands.  

The example that I gave was very specific and this did not address it at all. If you make good move but you have no idea why it's good, no skill is involved in making this move at all. Yet it can win the game on the spot.