Luck in Chess

Eseles is correct. No more explaining needed.

Nonsense.

A number of people seem to be redefining "luck", so I think they ought to state what they mean by it. Most reflective people accept that whilst chess isn't overtly a game of chance, there are still quite a number of ways that the results are indeed affected by some element of chance.

Those who deny this are simply falling prey to black and white thinking and refusing to understand what people mean when they point out that elements of luck can play a role in chess, more or less as in any endeavour.

<<Just because someone can get "lucky" in a game of chess, it doesn't mean that luck is part of the game>>

This, in particular, is complete claptrap. And by the way, just because I just had my dinner ... this doesn't mean that I just had my dinner. It means that I'm a parrot. In English, that is!

*cough* your English don't seem to include the ironic intonation on the item that is being "quoted"... ha ha

Sorry Eseles, if your entire post was supposed to be irony, you might have made a better job of signalling it; otherwise, there's nothing to distinguish your post from that of any normal, illogical, slightly stupid and slightly intelligent person. Therefore you may as well have been doing a parody of a person who contradicts himself.

The word is parody rather than irony and you still need to signal it and not expect too many mind-readers to come by.

if your understanding of the language and the logic is lacking, it's not my fault ... 

Haha, a rose by another name.

As for Eseles, critter of the world, he's just a normal, run-of-the-mill pompous oaf who likes to start an argument.

Mmmmmm

When probabilities turn in your favor that's luck. When your opponent makes a mistake earlier than your - there is an element of luck in this.

Thank you for such an elaborate answer.

thank you, i know well what it means when someone starts ad-hominem attacks - he just doesn't have any arguments to offer and tries to debase the debate

It´s boring because you dont make any effort to understand.

Read my comment #221

All computers make random movements. This is a fact, not something open to debate. No discussion here. And I think we all agree they can play chess very well.

Forget about the compueter that plays all random movements. It was just a simple example, but apparently it makes it harder for you to understand.

End of discussion.

yes, they play so very well by making random movements... XD roflmao!! this is hillarious!!

I agree. This is exactly right. And by the same token, if your opponent chooses the wrong move for the wrong reasons. This is why a player with 200 points rating advantage (Elo system, idk about Glicko) only expects to win 3 out of 4 games.

Well it's not even really re-defining luck, it's understanding what people mean by luck in general. What I do know is that people are using the same word "luck" to describe different situations. Now, we can use the same word there if we want, but it's natural that people will object to that, or want the term "luck" to be qualified, not to be pompous, but so that they know which of two things a person is referring to when they say "luck." That seems pretty reasonable and honest to me.

So I gave the example of how being lucky at slots has nothing to do with your thoughts (even if you thought you had an x percent chance of winning when really you had a y percent chance of winning), whereas chess "luck" appears to, in fact, depend on your thoughts, which seems to allow humans to "create" chance/luck, whatever that means. It seems difficult to make both of these things luck under one definition.

And of course some will say that while the two examples there are different, they are also similar in important respects. Ok. That's probably a clearer answer than saying "Let's attach this confusing word 'luck' to both of these because I want to seem smart by showing how much more I understand this convention than others do."

Perhaps a more interesting and useful question would be about responsibility: to what extent can we "take credit" for the moves we make? And if you wanted to go really extreme you could even ask questions like "is it our fault for doing something if we couldn't control the science of the neurons in our brain that made us do them?" Although even as a determinist that seems sketchy :) Yet, maybe I could be a decent devil's advocate for that kind of position -- that kind of logic doesn't seem so different from the logic people have been using here.

Your opponent moves don't have much to do with you thoughts - you have very little control of them and it resembles slot machine in this matter.

You obviously have no clue about how computers work, do you?

This is an image of a chess program. Do you see how d5 and Nf6 have the same score? Do you know how the chess program decides what movement to make? Randomly. Yes, randomly. Surprised?

Interesting comment, but I think your thoughts being involved doens´t necessarily mean a different definition of luck.

Take flipping a coin, for instance. We all agree that the output is random, so is a question of luck whether you get tails or heads, with 50% probability.

But you can have a perfect 50% probability random event by trying to guess before flipping the coin. So you win the game if you guess correctly and lose if you fail. Here, your thoughts are involved.

The key here is whether you have any power or not about the result of your decision. If you dont have that information, the event will be perfectly random no matter what your thinking proccess is.

I'm not at all surprised by some people's inability to understand the discussion, i'm rather amused by their non-sensical comments XD

But on the other hand, seeing their intellectual dishonesty makes me kinda sad :(

same !