luck or skill?

I gave up poker cause I got tired of weak players sucking out on me with sheer luck. Chess is all skill I thought. Yet playing a few hundred games it's obvious that I luck out quite a bit with unplanned situations that beat an opponent. Others admit the same. At least I don't lose cash in chess to idiots like happens at poker but I'm surprised and disappointed to see myself and others suck out a win just like at the casino. Maybe this only happens at the crappy player level. But I suspect not. Do even the best at chess just suck out wins?

Much less at higher levels until, I'm told, your opponents actually stop making blunders and you have to have a superior plan to win.  Cripes I hope I never get to that level; I'd never win another game. 

Every once in a while they get lucky, but you won't be getting to any high level off of luck and expect to stay there. You do have to learn how to actually play

The better you get, the luckier you get

it is not really luck,sometimes mistakes happen easily in the quicker time limits and at some levels you and your opponent are likely to make quite a lot of blunders!

Basically this. The stronger the player the more resourceful they are. So when they get into a bad position (unintentionally of course) they can generate a lot of practical compensation by making it really difficult to convert the better position into a win. Sometimes it's so difficult their opponent blunders and the game turns around. Since the chances of blundering in an easy position are practically zero (for strong players in long games), this sort of luck is the residue of skill.

I also play poker and hate making a 40k bet on a 1k 2k table and get 5 callers and my pocket Cowboys (kings) get beat on the river to an inside str8 draw of 5 8 off! chess you can force your opponent to make a mistake with superior play, the can go on tilt like poker. Very RARE at 1800 +. I play after too many beers for instance occasionally and lose or make it a lot harder than it should have been! My two favorite games, trying to master both is impossible at the same time, at my age anyway. I will be trying though. I am playing poker tournaments and chess tournaments too.

True buddy!

Poker and chess do have a lot in common. I definitely go on tilt after losing--same as poker. There is also a lot of the same "lie in wait" set ups and tricky gambits. At my level, people fall for that stuff in chess but, just like in poker, I suspect that gambits needs to be awfully well hidden to trick a good player. I was not really talking about lucking out when an opponent blunders.  I was referring to making a move and then noticing "oh I am glad that pawn covers an opening for his king". Hell, half the time I win on checkmate not even knowing I had checkmate! In other words, the pieces were all set in the right squares but not by my intention.  Feels exactly like hitting a boat on the flop after playing 7/2 off. A nagging sense that I just didn't deserve to win or, more accurately, that there was just no skill involved whatsoever--at any rate the win is very unsatisfying more so at chess which is theoretically not a game of chance. I guess at the non-suck levels of chess you actually deserve your wins. I think if you wager on a game at my level it would be illegal betting since it is, in fact, a game of chance.

A prime example about why they say mental game is the most important factor in poker right here folks.

There was a person in a world series of poker.

His first hand he started with TT and flop came TKK a full house.

His opponent was betting and he was raising and so on until he and his opponent were all in.

His opponent started with KT.

So the one player started with a boat and was out on the first hand.

Haha, yeah, sometimes in blitz I will mate before I see it's mate.

Sometimes I'm certain a move is mate, and when the game doesn't immediately end I wonder what I missed and hope I didn't screw up my position.

But yeah, this sort of thing happens less as you get better.

My last hand of poker. Pocket aces. Of course I raise. Other guy re-raises. I go all in. The fool calls! I smugly flip over my aces. He flips over...aces! Dealer flops 5 cards. He hits a flush. Lost beaucoup dollars. And that, folks, is why I started playing chess.

As long as 'players' involuntarily become 'sleepy' or otherwise, mentally distracted; By that periodically re-occurring, Negative {mental}, and self- accusatory commentary; There will Always be, a measure of 'luck' involved.

 What follows, is a 23 sec. excerpt of a late '1990s'.. 'Kasparov' big blunder, vs. 'Anand' ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xZDm670Zoc

Sometimes luck is the "ability of not blundering", players of higher ratings, even those around 1500, 1600, and sometimes 1800 Blunder all the time. However, if you blunder in a bad position, you can tell the difference between an accidental blunder and a pure dud. Sometimes luck is involved, but Chess doesn't become sheer luck, as that is not how you are meant to play. If a 2200 player plays a 1200 player, he will win 99.9% of the Games. That isn't luck, that's just good play. Yet, if you are 1500 and you play a lucky 600 player, you cannot always be sure that the 1500 player will win. Hope you understand my logic.

Luck is present in every activity where amateurs are involved. Simple as that.

Define 'luck' :P

Good point, your merits are small at times, someone else is pulling the strings.

Well poker is ruled by statistics that are replicated in realty over an indefinite long period. In chess the luck factor actually seems less predictable. I know if I have two hearts and two heart come in the flop I will hit a flush about 1/3 of the time over many hands. In chess random patterns seem to emerge after moving pieces around. It seems that the skill comes from exploiting the infinite varieties of patterns. But the patterns themselves are generated randomly? So is chess even in a sense even more random than poker?
I think whether great players have random, unpredictable intuition or mental processes that makes them great is a separate issue.

I think moving pieces randomly 'just to see what happens' does not create a random position; rather it creats a position unforseen by the player moving randomly. The unexpected nature of the position is likely compounded when the opponent plays an unexpected ('random') move. I am of the opinion that just because a position is unexpected does not make it random; therefore I consider unexpected wins or turns of battle to be 'fortunate' rather than 'lucky'. Intuition and mental processes can be developed by any player. "The harder I work, the luckier I get" - I think that was Henry Ford.