Luck in Chess

There is definitely less "luck" in chess than backgammon but it is that increased probability in practical play that draws many chess players to games like backgammon. 

I will never be great at either game and at 62 years of age have decided that tournament chess is no longer for me.  I have gone as high as I ever will in terms of rating so I now play chess only socially and am starting to play a lot more backgammon.  It is easier to excel in backgammon because memory isn't quite as important.

What some people call "luck in chess" is simply uncertainty, but that doesn't equal luck. Even I might use the word luck when speaking casually, but if you want to be serious about it, there is no luck in chess. If i toss a coin to decide between 2 moves, i introduce an element of randomness to how i play the game, but i still can't say that there's luck in chess - the luck/randomness part resides in how people are playing the game, and that's something different imo - i make a distinction between the two (i'm not chess, i'm a chess-player). Just because someone can get "lucky" in a game of chess, it doesn't mean that luck is part of the game - and on the contrary, in other games where luck is an integral part, players who play those games can still use their skills to minimise the luck-part, but that doesn't change the fact that in those games luck is part of the game.

Hope that makes sense...

When someone says there is luck in chess we all assume we are referring to the games we play.

If you could have to super-computers able to calculate all possible movements, then I gess you could say that chess is like tic tac toe, deterministic.

But I think we all were refering to the fact that in the games of chess we play luck is an element to consider.

Sorry, but even though i make mistakes, can't calculate very well, and whatnot, luck is not an element to consider in any game of chess that i play.

Yes, if you play against me (or someone like me)

You can´t avoid me making random movements.

Let me guess, you write all possible legal moves in little pieces of paper, fold them, throw them into a bowl, shake well, then draw one piece of paper with eyes closed and play that move, right?

I don´t need any paper to make a random movement.

If you have ever played against a computer, then luck has been a part in your game. Computers pick randomly when two or more movements have the same score for them.

Those two moves that have the same score were presumably the best in the position though, not any random legal moves that could be played.

It's a real shame you cannot understand the vast difference between choosing in random between 2 of the best moves that have been calculated by an engine at x-moves depth and randomly playing any legal move that's available.

and are you chosing between any legal move in random, or do you try to make the best move, even though you're not 100% sure which move is that?

You can program an engine so as to play moves at random - all legal moves have the same possibility to be played.

A chess game between 2 such engines (or people drawing legal moves from a bowl) would be random - but is this really chess?

"What some people call "luck in chess" is simply uncertainty, but that doesn't equal luck."

Yes, a good point. I tend to agree.

"I don´t need any paper to make a random movement."

It seems strange to actually think humans can mimic randomness. So you think you can "flip" a coin in your head 25 times and have the results not come out arbitrary (e.g., "oh there have been many heads, maybe I should do a tails, or, maybe it would make sense for there to be two heads in a row every now and then")?

It reminds me of that paradox where the donkey is hungry and must choose between two completely equal piles of hay (size, distance from the donkey, etc), and he simply can't choose and dies. That is, unless his psychology just makes an "arbitrary choice." But an arbitrary choice isn't really random; rather, it's having some strange bias towards one of the choices for the moment. And that arbitrariness, depending on the individual, could mean an 80% chance (rather than the "rational" 50% chance) of picking the pile of hay on the right, maybe if it really prefers its right side for example.

So I don't think we can actually simulate a 50-50 shot properly because that's not how our minds work. We look for reasons, even irrational ones that we might temporarily convince ourselves of, when we make decisions.

At Elubas:

You don´t need to mimic randomness to make a ramdon decision.

Take the example of the crossroad: as long as you dont have any information  of which way is the good way, no matter how you make you decision (flipping a coin, turning left because you like left or any other arbitrary reason), the fact that you end up choosing the right one will be a random event. It will only be lucky that you choose the good one.

What is a real shame is that you don´t understand that you can ramdonly choose between two movements.

Ramdon is ramdon. Either if you choose ramdonly 1 out of 100 legal movements or if you do it only between two preselected movements.

Those preselected movements, one can be a blunder and the other a real good movement. If you choose ramdonly between a blunder and a good movement, then luck determines the output of the game.

This is pretty obvious. If you dont get it, sorry for you.

mmm

@Ancares: I guess my problem is that the uncertainty in chess still has a different source compared to a coin flip. A coin flip doesn't give you the info you need; in chess you have the information; how you use it is up to you. I guess I'm just not really impressed that a person can subjectively fabricate (or try/want to anyway) a 50-50 chance in their head over a chess position they are unsure about. Anyone can fabricate a 50-50 shot in their head for anything if they want. And that may cause that person to say "oh, I didn't know this would be right." But they are the ones that chose to feel that way. If you compare that to guessing that "A" is true after hearing "A or B" is true, then it's not just meaningless odds you gave yourself; there is no information there to understand. Of course then whether you are right is all about probability.

So I don't know. Can I make a book non-continuous just by thinking/saying there is a 50% chance that this book in front of me exists? I mean, sure, I have a right to feel that way; that doesn't mean it tells us anything meaningful about the world. If I decide to do jumping jacks after looking at a cell phone, does this ascribe any property to the phone? No, the jumping jacks are all me and my weird thoughts.

So I guess that's why I feel strange about saying that our subjective interpretation of something, that has a (theoretically) derivable answer, creates luck. It seems to make reality mind dependent almost. Under such a view, no one will say something is luck until a person just decides they will "feel lucky" when something happens. Perhaps from the person's perspective it's luck, but that doesn't seem to be the same sort of luck involved in winning at slots, because that luck has nothing to do with the person's subjective feelings at all; when assessing whether someone at slots got lucky, no one will be basing that decision on what the person who won thought would happen, no matter what they thought.

"Take the example of the crossroad: as long as you dont have any information  of which way is the good way,"

Yes, but chess is not a case in which you don't have information about the correct way! You do have the information! But when you put perfect information with an imperfect human, perfect inferences do not result. But that's really the imperfect human's fault. Again the human may feel lucky, unlucky, they can feel however the hell they want because they're free beings, it doesn't matter.

You do have this information??? And you are not a world champion yet??

this goes for Ancares, too

first he talks and i reply for the case of an engine chosing between the top-2 moves which have an equal eveluation, and then he twists it like we were talking about an engine chosing between the best move and a blunder (which doesn't make sense, if you think about it, in a chess-way - it's not really chess if you don't try to make the best move)

All the information is on the chess-board... right in front of you.

If you don't have the mental capacity to read and evaluate it, don't blame your luck.

The world chess champion doesn't have the title cause he's more lucky than others.