Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

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Kotshmot
CooloutAC wrote:
Kotshmot wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:
Kotshmot wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:
Kotshmot wrote:
CooloutAC wrote:
Kotshmot wrote:
btickler wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

I mean, btickler agrees with you, and that's certainly a bad sign.

Your memory is failing you again.

Btickler argues, imperfectly, that luck doesn't exist in chess but I don't believe hes ever made the even more insane claim that there is no luck in sports.


it all depends on who btickler is dishonestly trolling in the moment.  Look at his most recent post and you will see he is contradicting your assertion.  He will argue there is luck in chess when arguing with me.  lol

But my friend.  You sound somewhat contradicting yourself,  when you say its crazy to argue there is no luck in sports,  but its not crazy to argue there is no luck in chess.   First of all,  you are diminishing your own arguments regarding chess.  Secondly, chess is another sport and you are confirming one of the most common motives many have in this thread.  You are simply not competitive and lack any sports sense, resenting those that do.

Luck and chess is a more complex debate and it's more difficult to distinguish skill from other variables, that's why I have more understanding if someone makes the claim that luck doesn't exist in chess. In fact chess does the best job of minimizing the element of luck out of any game/sports.

In sports like soccer it is incredibly easy to tell apart which event is caused by skill, and where luck is in play.

The example Ive given before is good. A player attempts a pass to his teammate, but a failed kicking technique results in the ball going straight in the net. No soccer player would ever claim that they scored by skill when this happens. Their level of skill did not have an effect on this finish. This is an easy argument.

 

Chess is no different then any sport,  you tell yourself otherwise which is an obvious motive now.   You probably think flagging someone is lucky,  and that players should resign in losing positions.  You probably think chess is too hard for society to understand,  you probably think speed chess is not real chess compared to classical,  etc.. etc..   

For example,  you think any player can accidentally pass a soccer ball into a goal,   when I gave you the example of myself as someone who never could.   The players put themselves into the position for that to happen,  like good players put themselves into winning positions in chess when not planning for them.   Its very simple to understand that human ability is skill,  and any result from any action determined to be from it,  whether conscious or not,   is not luck by definition of the word itself.

When I said earlier you ramble, that first paragraph is it. Just total garbage lmao. I dont care to compare chess to another sports what I said is its a more difficult discussion in terms of luck. Flagging isn't lucky, players can resign when they want. Chess is hard for some people, easy for some. We done with this? Wasting time in this, deflecting the relevant points is why I dont like to have this one sided debate with you.

And you're right, it is skill to be well positioned to score a goal. All of this leading up to the moment can be skill, but still a failed kick that leads to a good outcome is luck. Your argument here is "there were many skillful actions done leading up to that lucky action, so it can't be luck". No, because goal still wouldn't be scored without the failed, lucky kick, so your argument is wrong.

There was no human ability involved in the goal scoring moment, because the kick FAILED, but goal was still scored. Same goes with chess but with different examples.

 

And what I am saying is you only believe it is more difficult,  because you don't consider chess a sport.   Its not a failed kick if it ended up being a goal.  Its only luck to you because it was not planned for by the player even though that contradicts the definition of luck since it was his own action that caused it.   And what I have repeatedly said to you is better players will always get lucky  according to your logic more often then lesser skilled players,   which is why we can conclude no force of luck plays a role.   

This should already be common sense and self evident,  but the word exists as it applies to gaming to differentiate between human force of action,  and other forces out of ones control,  specifically for people like who you lack a comprehension of this simple distinction.   This is to prevent sore losers and poor sports like yourself,  from diminishing rightful human achievement.   

Any  failure resulting from a kick is simply an unskillful kick,  not an unlucky one, which is probably something you would admit.  But for you its out of sheer selfish convenience the winner is always lucky,  which is a contradiction to the technical definition of the word.

"Its not a failed kick because it ended up being a goal"

So a kick that was meant to be a pass, but was misshit to another direction, cannot be considered failed just because there was a great outcome? Thats just fundamentally wrong thinking (consistently bad with the other stuff tbf).

"Winner is always lucky"

No, this is just your assumption based on nothing. Luck as I describe it is completely random and doesn't correlate with winning or losing. A losing team could get a lucky goal, a lucky block, anything and still lose the game. Someone who fails a kick 3 times in a game and still doesn't lose the ball still might be on the losing side. So I don't know where you're going with this? Just lost I guess with desperate rambling?

 

first of all it wasn't necessarily mishit,  it could be the receiver who missed the ball or wasn't in the proper place to receive the setup.  It could of been the poor skill of the goalie.    If you want to see a real mishit put me in that situation lol. But the reason they were in those positions in the first place was by design.  This is why according to your false logic good players always get luckier then bad players,  because the truth is even when not precisely planned they put themselves in better positions just like chess pieces on a chessboard.      Second of all absolutely YES.     Because no other force of action hit the ball except the player himself.

Nothing is completely random in your scenario for the reasons I have described above.  It seems you don't even know what "completely random" means.  

These "what if" arguments do absolutely nothing. For the arguments sake you have to assume it was misshit when I say so for the practical example lmao, you can't just say "well maybe not, then it's not luck". The fact that you resort to this kind of nonsense hints to me that you don't believe yourself.

Whether they we're in position or at the hot dog stand when the incident happened, as I stated before it doesn't matter. If skillful actions lead to a lucky event, it's still lucky.

I do agree that in terms of humans, our attempts are skill or lack thereof. But if only skill is determining what FOLLOWS your action, then a failed attempt would always lead to a bad outcome. Otherwise again, we would have to say "He scored by his lack of skill" instead of "it was a lucky shot". Clearly this is not the case.

Yes you can train your passing to develop your skill, there is no luck there. But where the luck comes in is when you have failed your attempt. AFTER the failed kick, you're not in control of the ball. How do we know this? You have no idea where it will go after the failed kick.

Kotshmot
CooloutAC wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

Again, a lesser player would not have such a successful mistake, no matter how much you think he miscalculated.
Wrong.

In soccer especially you will find the better players get unintended goals more often thAn those of lesser skill.
Right.

thats because their own actions is the sole determining force.
Wrong.

 

So you are telling me in the same situation i could score a goal?   Wrong.  hahah.

And thankyou for saying i'm right on the second point.  Which is a simple way of proving my argument.  Which i have said multiple times to koshmot and which he denied and mpaetz pretending I didn't reply with.

And as for the 3rd point.  Please tell me what other force was there besides the players?  

The second point the way you put it here is correct but it has nothing to do with your argument, let alone proving it.

Best players get more unintended goals, because their skill allows them to be at the right areas more and score more in total. A lesser skilled player will score less in total, but a bigger % of those goals scored will in the long run be unintended goals. This is what actually is relevant to your point.

Why this doesn't help your argument? Again, skillful actions leading to a lucky event does not undo the luck.

jjupiter6

The fact anyone places any credibility in an online IQ test says more about their IQ than the test itself.

Ziryab
Optimissed wrote:
jjupiter6 wrote:

The fact anyone places any credibility in an online IQ test says more about their IQ than the test itself.

I don't think I've ever looked at an online test. Can you tell by looking at them that they are useless or is it the standardisation that's no good?

 

Those I’ve looked at seem a lot like those archives of “historic photos” that give you one photo per page with dozens of ads.

I think the technical term is clickbait.

Ziryab
Optimissed wrote:

Ziryab wrote: In my experience, the online IQ tests do not go up to 160. I scored both 135 and 85 on one by first getting every question right, and then deliberately getting every question wrong. Note that the range is skewed above average.

I mentioned before that I used a different method to standardise the Eysenck tests I was doing in the late 1970s. I always tried my level best but my aim was to try to get the lowest score I could manage, by doing them when I was hung over, extremely tired and with a bad cold, and so forth. My stand-out score from all the others was that I managed in one of the 15 or 20 tests I did to score 116. I could draw several conclusions, one being that practice at doing them does affect results somewhat but not nearly so much as how you are feeling when you do a test. A lot of people don't place enough significance on that but overvalue practice. This is one of the factors that make a single IQ test unreliable. The only proper way would be to do a battery of them on different days, as I did, eliminate the ones where the results are significantly lower than the rest and then take an average of the rest. I think that would give the most accurate result.

I actually believe that the range should be skewed above "average". Back when I was interested in such things my impression was that the average is about 105 or 106. That would eliminate those who have a physical reason for scoring badly and those who don't try to do the test well. 105 fits the results you obtained better than 100 does.

 

At an average of 99.12, the UK is about 1 1/2 points higher than the US.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

 

lfPatriotGames

"The fact that you resort to this kind of nonsense hints to me that you don't believe yourself."

That's a two thumbs up comment. The way I see it, there can be only two possibilities. He believes himself, which seems almost impossible but I guess it's not because it's very rare for someone to say something, then go to great lengths to prove the opposite. 

Or, he doesn't believe himself. This seems a lot more likely. He has a belief, and is now so committed to it that he bends over backwards to try to convince others that what he says, somehow, makes sense. 

It would be interesting to somehow get an honest answer to whether or not he believes himself. 

Mike_Kalish

IQ is a completely meaningless and undefined term. It is a human construct, designed to create an artificial distinction between humans and it creates a false means of comparison. Tests that supposedly measure IQ actually only measure a very narrow segment of human brain capacity, and typically one that doesn't correlate to success (another ill-defined term) or happiness in life. Sure, parents get to brag about their 4 year old who is reading at a 6 year old level (woohoo... 150 IQ), but by 13, hormones have leveled the intellectual playing field. 
Anyone who is willing to spend serious time and energy discussing IQ..... well, I'll reserve my comments, but I think they should find better things to talk about..... like chess for example. 

Mike_Kalish
Optimissed wrote:
mikekalish wrote:

IQ is a completely meaningless and undefined term. It is a human construct, designed to create an artificial distinction between humans and it creates a false means of comparison. Tests that supposedly measure IQ actually only measure a very narrow segment of human brain capacity, and typically one that doesn't correlate to success (another ill-defined term) or happiness in life. Sure, parents get to brag about their 4 year old who is reading at a 6 year old level (woohoo... 150 IQ), but by 13, hormones have leveled the intellectual playing field. 
Anyone who is willing to spend serious time and energy discussing IQ..... well, I'll reserve my comments, but I think they should find better things to talk about..... like chess for example. 

Human constructs are human constructs, for that matter. Would you say that javelin throwing is a "completely meaningless and undefined term"? If not then why IQ? Just an assertion, based on the fact that it's all a bit woolly.

I've been trying to steer the conversation towards luck in chess but the psychopath won't budge and then he claims it's me!

 

Mike_Kalish

hat's a good point.....but I see a difference between IQ and javelin. In javelin, it is clear  what we're measuring and there is one simple test that everyone agrees on.  If there was such a test in IQ, then I would say that even as a human construct, it may have no value outside it's own measurement, but at least it's coherent and consistent.  Javelin doesn't transfer to anything else, but at least you can say "I was an olympic  javelin champ and threw it 100 meters" and it means something, and everyone knows what that something is. To say "I have an IQ of 160 just has no real meaning" and whatever test determined that, another test would likely disagree.  And even if the tests agreed, other humans would still doubt.

Mike_Kalish

Optimissed, why are you engaging with a "psychopath"?

Mike_Kalish

Would you say that javelin throwing is a "completely meaningless and undefined term"?

 

No. Unlike IQ, it has one simple test that everyone agrees accurately measures ability. And no one pretends that javelin throwing has any value outside of the track.

Mike_Kalish
Optimissed wrote:

He's engaging with me. If left to his own devices, he bullies people and makes their life here a misery. Someone needs to make it clear what he is, for the sake of the very many people he trolls. That's an honest answer and I hope you understand now.

I came to the same conclusion you did, and just decided he wasn't worth my time or energy. He can't bully you if you disengage.

Ziryab
mikekalish wrote:

IQ is a completely meaningless and undefined term. It is a human construct, designed to create an artificial distinction between humans and it creates a false means of comparison. Tests that supposedly measure IQ actually only measure a very narrow segment of human brain capacity, and typically one that doesn't correlate to success (another ill-defined term) or happiness in life. Sure, parents get to brag about their 4 year old who is reading at a 6 year old level (woohoo... 150 IQ), but by 13, hormones have leveled the intellectual playing field. 
Anyone who is willing to spend serious time and energy discussing IQ..... well, I'll reserve my comments, but I think they should find better things to talk about..... like chess for example. 

 

I'm in general agreement with a point at the heart of your statement, but might less enthusiastic with how far you take it.

Money is a human construct. It is a measure of certain kinds of success.

IQ tests and standardized tests like the SAT used in American college admissions are excellent predictors of academic success. 

Ronald Reagan was not bright by the standards of IQ and other measures of knowledge and critical thinking, but his speechmaking moved people far more than most of his predecessors and successors. His biographer, Lou Cannon, struggled with whether he was "intelligent", which led him to Howard Gardner's notion of multiple intelligences. Reagan was socially brilliant.

Explaining the success of Don the Con, however, is gonna take something different. 

Mike_Kalish

If you look at the school record before your throw, it was a throw that stuck, as were all previous school records. So how do you claim your non-stick throw should count? The school record is defined as "The longest legal throw by a student that stayed within the arc and stuck "....no? It seems to me that the rules are clear and the test is accurate.... and your throw not counting, for a very clear reason, seems to offer evidence that this is NOT like measuring IQ, where there are no rules to follow and no clear and simple test. 

Mike_Kalish

 

IQ tests and standardized tests like the SAT used in American college admissions are excellent predictors of academic success. 


Not everyone agrees with this, and I think you'd be hard pressed to support it. Further, I believe there are far better predictors of academic success, e.g. past academic success. I would bet that looking at a student's high school record gives you a much better academic picture of that student than looking at his SAT scores. Great to look at both, but if you had to pick one, which would it be?

Ziryab

Gold toilets and a cheap chess set. Not the "common touch".

Mercury is poison, so I'll grant that metaphor.

Whether Buchanan was worse is a question for historians.

Mike_Kalish

Explaining the success of Don the Con, however, is gonna take something different. 

 

I'll take a shot.....  I'd say his success comes from hard work, passion, and determination.

DiogenesDue
Optimissed wrote:

 Closing out an argument is not possible against someone like yourself because you simply don't allow it. I don't dispute that you scored in the mid 130s to 140 in a battery of IQ tests but you're still just as dishonest in the way you try to debate as anyone else here. It isn't possible to conclude an argument against a person who is so scared of losing it, he will use ANY tactic to avoid it. And that's you. It's why I called you a psychopath, because I believe you are one. I wasn't name-calling. You need help.
Incidentally, and this is the last time I'm saying it, in the battery of Eysenck tests I took around 1978, when I was recovering from infectious hepatitis, which makes your mind dull, in case you aren't aware of that, I repeatedly scored 169, with most of the other results coming in around 150, which were occasions I did a test when feeling unwell or tired. Regarding the 169s, of which I think there were five, in a couple of those I made such obvious blunders that I thought my true capability was 180 but I've never claimed that because I didn't score it. When I was nine in early 1961, I took a new Schonell IQ test, which had been running for maybe eight or ten years and I was told I scored second highest ever in the county. They came down from the head office to look at me. I asked what my score was and they wouldn't tell me. All they would say was "over 140", with a sort of smile.
I won't repeat this again but if you had the memory you claim, you'd remember I told you before. The fact that you say you can't remember shows you up for exactly what you are, one way or another. I really would not like to be you. It must stink. You're mixing me up with all the ones who make false claims here. You don't have the intelligence nor the perceptive abilities to tell the real from the invented.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/does-true-randomness-actually-exist?page=43#comment-46456070

[the first one I found, there are others buried in the years of delusional boasting]

"I was what is termed a "special" child. My memory goes back to six months old. Sometimes I even think I can remember being Christened, just about. I was a childhood prodigy ..... educational psychologist made special trips to look at me. I was also extremely messed up but that's another story. My IQ is between 160 and 170. Probably nearer 170 and higher on a good day. I had a photographic memory.
So I tended to think whatever I said was right. I was used to people being so much less intellectually able than me that it was like living in a very unrealistic environment. I was a logical positivist.

When I was 18 I met a beautiful, fantastic 17 year old girl. She could cook well, loved going for walks, made her own clothes, intellectually brilliant and a natural athelete. Always won Victrix Lodorum at her school and never trained. She felt sorry for the others who trained like mad and still got beaten in the high jump, long jump and 100 metres sprint. We're still friends. We used to have enormous arguments. She was into the idea of magic. I thought it was stupid. Eventually she asked me just to open my mind to it. To deliberately accept that it was possible I had been wrong. In a few days I realised I'd been wrong."

Supernatural powers:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/does-true-randomness-actually-exist?page=43#comment-46452868

"But I used to be able to see through solid objects. I'm not even joking. I probably could do it still. I can make people better by thinking. A long while ago I was shown a series of paranormal abilities, one after the other. Each one I repressed one after the other. That was instinctive. The final one was to see the truth. That's why a lot of people find fault with me and ignore me."

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/does-true-randomness-actually-exist?page=141#comment-50270720

"I would try to change the outcome of tomorrow, by thought, basically. I can direct my thoughts towards people and heal them. I've been able to do it all my life. By thinking calming thought full of quiet energy it is possible to sort out someone's bodily functions so they work better and don't cause them distress. At another point in my life I could see through solid objects and see auras and, well, you name it, but I rejected all these things to some extent because seeing truth .... seeing what is .... is perhaps the most important ability that exists. To some extent I can influence situations in the world too so I would hope I could influence THAT situation for the better!"

Who's the psychopath?

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/does-true-randomness-actually-exist?page=108#comment-49143598

"Let me bore you with a little about me. I started a Facebook account circa 2003 or 4 and got into debating. I was interested in varied subjects. At one time, unasked for, I was being called "the best debater in English on Facebook". Naturally, there were several hundred people who tried to "win" arguments with me. It was like being a fast gun in the West. Tedious.
In my one previous incarnation here on Chess.com, several years before this one, I met up with Elroch and in those days he was such an obvious troll that I spent an hour investigating him. I found out his name, his job and the name of the village near Cambridge he lived in. Just in case. It's as well to be aware of who some people are."

So...who can't tell the real from the invented?

Ziryab
Optimissed wrote:

Still, I'm not sure how you can agree with people who claim that IQ is meaningless and then tell us that Ronald wasn't "bright by the standards of IQ and other measures of knowledge and critical thinking", Ziryab!

 

The point is that the meaning is relatively limited. It is no guarantee of success (no matter how that is measured). It is a human construct like race or money. These are not insignificant.

People with high IQs possess knowledge and reasoning ability. OTOH, as Gardner argues, there are other forms of "intelligence" that matter.

DiogenesDue
Optimissed wrote:

^^^
AAgh, it's 'Im! Blenkinsop, do something!
Yus sir, I'll jump on him.

That, my dear btickler, is an example for all to see, that you are a full blown and anointed psychopath. All of that is unrelated. You are a nutcase. Proven.

Go back up and read your first quoted post about your girlfriend, and then "open your mind" to the fact that you're the nutcase.