Luck in Chess

The amount of luck involved in a game of chess is something we can not measure. I agree with you that if I play against a GM then the amount of luck will be insignificant, almost zero.

But when playing aginst someone that is your same level, then it increases. How much? I don´t know, but I wouldn´t say is insignificant.

Whatever "luck" happens is not the result of you - it's the result of your opponent making mistakes. You have some limited control of this (like trying to complicate the game) but very-very limited. The rest of your opponent play is out of your control - just like coin tossing.

It's an illusion to think that we can make a concsious choice between 75% and 100%. Because no human can achieve 100%. You can improve your chances by proper training, good sleep, concentration during the game. So it will go up to 80%. But from time to time you will loose to weaker players and win against stronger ones - because probabilities of those events is far from zero. On large number of games it all evens out and our rating corresponds pretty  well to our chess skill. But when just one game decides who wins the tournament or gets promoted etc. - there is quite a big share of chance/luck involved.

Here is a simple math exercise. According to ELO rating definition 200 points difference means 76% result for stronger player. Let's exclude draws for simplicity. Then 1600 playing a single game vs 1400 has 76% chances of winning. In a match of 3 games his chances of winning are 85%, in a match of 5 games - 91%. Conclusion - luck plays most significant role in an event consisting of one game, as number of games increases the role of luck diminishes, results have better correlation with skill difference.

        The above is rather obvious. The more games played between opponents of different levels of skill, the more accurately that difference will be reflected in the outcome. This will be so in any contest, not just chess.

Of course it's obvious. My point was that outcome doesn't depend on skill level only.

If you hang your Q for nothing and are ready to resign when your opponent takes it but ..... he doesnt notice it and makes another move instead and you go on to win the game then you were LUCKY !  If you are 4 moves away from being mated  and suddenly your opponent has the " shits" and must rush off to the toilet and doesnt get back to the game until his time runs out and he loses you were LUCKY !  Luck does exist in chess , both good and bad whether people recognize it or not . 

When the word "luck" is applied to a game, don't most people mean that something "improbable" happened?  I don't understand the difficulty here.  The guy in the video is saying that it's improbable that a 2800 rated player will lose to a 2400 player, but statistically it will happen.  But, I think he loses people comparing chess to backgammon.  Because the role of dice is random, it's much more likely that a novice could beat the best player in the world at bacgammon, then a novice beating the best chess player.  That's where the video is wack imo.  BTW, I have not read all of the posts, so apologies if we've been over this.

Not much luck in chess

Oh man, I am so lucky you blundered..

Every time I win I feel lucky - my opponent was not obliged to make all those mistakes, but nevertheless he made them.

true but that isn't really luck

"It's common for people to find arguments against their beliefs to be "uninteresting"."

It's common for people to think the almost tautological statement "if luck exists in everything, then luck exists in chess," to be uninteresting. But, by all means, your interpretation is so much more plausible :)

Perhaps we define interesting differently. I mean, I would think you would agree that the above statement would be uninteresting. So it might not be so unbelievable that I find it more interesting to find the consequences of stipulating determinism. I mean, I won't find myself guilty for finding such an endeavor to be interesting, but, sure, you don't have to find that interesting if you don't want to. For what it's worth, we do not seem to be in disagreement about the consequences of indeterminism being true regarding the OP's question.

"Are you suggesting that it isn't luck if I happened to choose at random a line to study last night and, today, my opponent happens to play it, out of the many hundreds he could have chosen?"

Why does this have to be luck? It doesn't make your actions on the board any less legitimate or "yours." Yes, your opponent could have chosen hundreds of lines. And he chose this one. He then loses as a result of his choice. It's not a revelation. I mean, the way humans behave, we'll say things like "just so happened" for just about anything. Is the quality of luck defined as "having the ability to make humans think something "just so happened" to occur and then being bitter or happy about it?" Ok, then everything is luck, determinist or not. I just think it's kind of a weird, human-dependant definition of luck. And maybe not an effective one; it's almost like the statement "everything exists." It would be true, but wouldn't tell us much about what makes each game (poker, chess, etc.) different from another.

So I don't know I guess that's the thing for me. It's not that there can't be luck in chess, it's just that people freak out when there's something they can't predict, and so they then start thinking moves are made randomly. I don't exactly freak out when I take a game of skill, and then things I didn't predict start happening. Maybe that does mean there is luck, but I'm not one to jump to conclusions all the time and say "you're really stupid for not assuming there is luck there when really it could just be something that looked like luck but has a different nature to it compared to slots."

So I mean, sure, you can't predict what your opponent will do. But I'm not going to be obnoxious about that and then start looking for luck in everything, saying "oh I didn't know this move was good," "oh no this person obviously didn't know his move was good, he must have been lucky," as it mischaracterizes what is really going on. Yeah, skill and uncertainty run into each other when you don't have a lot of skill.

I'm not going to just give up on the term skill just because we start not knowing things. Because I'm not an inflexible person. I might instead think, well, maybe this isn't as it appears. Maybe uncertainty and skill aren't as inconsistent as they appear on the surface. And maybe they are, but I'm going to come to that conclusion by digging deep into the issue, not by making huge assumptions. I'm not going to blame myself for that policy.

I don't know, it's this same kind of presumptuous attitude that can make people unnecessarily hostile in political situations. It's like if someone said, oh shit, you're pro-choice, you're killing things, you're a murderer and you're too stupid to know that. Well, no, you're only looking at isolated aspects of the issue; that's why you think it's so simple. Unfortunately that results in people who probably don't like killing things being called murderers. Sure does escalate fast.

"It's common for people to find arguments against their beliefs to be "uninteresting"."

And for the record, I find indeterminism to be an extremely interesting view. I was fascinated by our discussion and your ideas, which is kind of why I, well, said so, in that thread. Oh well, people who want to assume the worst about you will just ignore those comments and see things through their own lens. I'll just say that I don't think people should do that, but ok, you have the final say in what you do :)

It isn't about winning and losing. Of course putting in an effort to win debates is good, since that releases the most challenging ideas. But no, I don't consider a "loss" a true loss at all. In fact losing a debate usually implies learning a lot of new ideas compared to previously.

Your "feeling" tells you nothing about what made your moves better than your opponent's moves.

Well another way to put it is that you simply beat your opponent. You and your opponent have to find a way to make good moves and not lose on time; you did, he didn't. Sure... the reason for a win can be different every game you play; in fact it is. It could be because of a passed pawn, kingside attack, or, sure, your opponent taking too much time in the bathroom... I don't know, be healthier next time or hold it in.

But moves can be weighted differently. Playing 30 good moves is great, but if in doing so you don't check for your queen hanging that's not really good chess. If you incorporate making sure your queen is not hanging then it can become good chess. So yeah, you pretty much played like a beginner if you hang your queen, even if you played GM like moves for much of the game.

That doesn't mean you're a beginner necessarily, as long as you are able to keep that queen blunder one in a million rare. But yeah, that one "rare" time you blundered your queen, it was still you playing -- you brought your same mind there, but you didn't check or something... the fact that you would check most of the time in most situations doesn't make it any less "your" decision than any other decision you make. Even if it's variance, it's variance of your own skill. Not any objective variance around you.

For what it's worth, here's an example of what might change my view: Let's say that every move, there is a 50% chance that the rules will change (e.g., how pieces move, etc.). Then, yeah, any time the rules changed you could complain. On the other hand, in regular chess, when you complain about moves you thought were good that are actually not, well, you're complaining about yourself.