Relationship Between Specific Chess Skills and ELO

First, let me say I don't disagree with anything you wrote in your post #45. We can argue about the relative contributions of luck and skill to each game, but I think you are right in principle.

However, consider this... If two players have the same Elo rating their probability of winning or drawing is equal. Why then should one or other player win a game at all? If both players are equally skillful, isn't a win/loss due to "luck" - intrinsic (i.e. human) chance factors?

If two players' ratings differ by 200 Elo points, the more skilled player would have anything between a) a 75% chance of winning and a 25% chance of losing, and b) a 50% chance of winning, 0% chance of losing and 50% chance of drawing (according to Wikipedia). That means that, despite the 200 Elo points of skill differential, there is still a substantial chance of the lower rated player winning or drawing against the more skilled player, who would always win if chess was 100% skill. What a difference that 1% of luck makes!

Every game has an opening.

Every game has a middle.

Every game has an end.

Name any game-Risk, soccer, Scrabble, baseball, etc. All require some skill to become good. Any game can be compared to another in this way. It does not make them similar. 

Thanks so much for all of these thoughtful, helpful replies!

Extra special thanks to:

hicetnunc for providing the most specific treatment of skills by elo ; that was super, super helpful

Mr. Blunderful for the great poker to chess analogies; these made complete sense to me and they helped to crystallize my thinking

TonyH for the specific beginner-oriented recommendations (would it be possible to tie your recommendations to ELO as fburton suggests?)

Wafflemaster for his explanation of skills in chess as being “fuzzy” and often just separated by degrees; that is something that I’d been wondering about

Kingpatzer for highlighting the importance of trying to deduce/predict an opponent’s thoughts/plan and of the value of “thinking out loud” in chess; interestingly enough these are skills poker players also value greatly; poker players often call the war of deductive reasoning “leveling;” in addition, Alan Schoonmaker addresses the importance of “thinking out loud” nicely in his book The Psychology of Poker

There are too many great replies to acknowledge them all individually but thanks so much to all who have shared their insights

To reach 1800, you have to know how to spot 3 move tactics, not drop pieces, and not be losing out of the opening.  You also need to know how to win up a piece.  That's about it - even with strategy completely dominated by tactics you can still do fine at that level with a gambit repertoire.  To reach 2000, you have to make no obvious blunders despite still having gaping holes in your chess knowledge.  Your endgames can still be atrocious as long as you don't drop pawns or make horrific errors and know the basics of endgame technique.  The only thing really required for 2000 is to be able to calculate 3 moves out fairly consistently and know the basics of playing for space and exchanging pieces, as well as some opening theory. Obviously this still takes a bit of work, but it's ridiculous to claim that A-Expert are particularly knowledgeable or strong players.

 You're kidding right? 

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, IMO.

Although I'm exaggerating a bit, there's some truth to what I'm saying - to be able to calculate a few moves accurately and consistently is more than most players can do and is sufficient for expert level play along with basic knowledge.  Look over games played by 2000-2200 players and look at what they do in closed positions without theory to guide them.  Or look at how they play complicated endgames.  It sounds ridiculous, but they're really not as strong as class players think...

I would add some attacking skills (to notch points), the sense of piece activity, and some familiarity with the middlegames arising from your favourite openings, but all in all, I think IrrationalTiger is not too far from the truth

There has been some discussion on luck in chess here.

My view is that anything you don't look over, you, in a sense, take some sort of risk. For example, if you don't go through the routine of checking all checks (to make sure you're checking them correctly -- kidding of course) against your king, then of course, you are at a higher risk of a blunder based on checks. It doesn't mean if you don't check for one move you are necessarily going to make a blunder; it's just that if you look for checks, you can make sure that you are not making a blunder, rather than hope that your move works out.

So essentially, playing the odds is looking for as many possibilities as necessary (yet, in an efficient way to avoid flagging). If you don't check for knight forks, then you should accept the fact that sometimes you might be punished with a knight fork coming your way, and sometimes you won't be. You can't control what you don't know about. Good chess players cannot completely control their fate, but they try to have as much control as they can get, whether it's in accurate calculation, or sharp intuition.

lol, I feel like a doctor, like I'm saying "if you do this, you are at a higher risk of ------ cancer." I mean, there are probably heavy smokers out there who have perfectly fine lungs their entire life. And yet, there are people who don't smoke at all, yet get lung cancer from second hand smoke! The point is, sometimes these things will happen, even if you think wisely -- all a lowly human can do is influence his fate as much as possible; never control it!

(Referring to a post made by Irrational Tiger) And about saying that it's asinine to claim that an A player or an expert is a good player: it's asinine to think you can make an objective standard for something like this. If you're a beginner, then you think that 2000s can't make a silly mistake; if you are a 2700, you think that 2000s don't know the basics of chess (because 2700 players think 4 move combinations are basic). It's all your perception.

Hicetnunc, you are a really nice guy, but unfortunately, that means that sometimes you give guys like Irrational Tiger too much credit. He's trolling; anything true that he says is only by accident.

This from some unrated, irrational person. Hilarious!

These are the same clowns who are forever trying to sort out who was better, Kramnik or Smyslov. 

Unrated, irrational, of the opinion that players stronger than him suck= artificially intelligent troll.

Assuming a player like Magnus Carlsen made such a statement, would you valuate it differently ?

Wouldn't you? lol

Honestly, yes. I would evaluate a player rated 2830 differently.

Who wouldn't?  At least they might actually know what they're talking about. 

I admit, I wouldn't either, but at the same time I think it is not a very good style, because the truth of a given statement should not be exclusively measured by the "rank" of the person who makes it.

It's all about perspective. A 2800 looks upon those rated a thousand points below us probably like an 1800 looks upon the 800's. Just beginning

One difficulty is that no one every really masters anything in chess

So it would be absurd to say _____ range of players knows _____ insomuch that it suggests they're done learning about _____

Maybe the only general thing you could say is that stronger players tend to be familiar with more patterns than weaker players... and maybe have more experience applying them in real game situations or something.