There is luck in chess?
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there is no luck, at all
I believe I have been very lucky in a few games on here, discovering moves that i missed. but i believe the higher your rating the less its luck more judgement and tactical planning.
cianlloyd wrote: I believe I have been very lucky in a few games on here, discovering moves that i missed. but i believe the higher your rating the less its luck more judgement and tactical planning.
So you're saying that you made a good move by pure luck?
I suppose so yes I discovered a good move by luck. I have been building a good strong position, and believed i covered all posts (so to speak) and my opponent has moved a move i didnt expect or forsee and have then discovered a better position.
I believe at the level i was 1400 or so you can uncover unexpected good moves but as your rating and concentration increases you weigh every eventuality up.
I tend to move more by instinct than mulling over move upon move perhaps thats why my rating will never greatly increase.
I have definitely had the experience of making a very good move by luck. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I make a move and don't realize how good it is. For example, I think I've just made a simple threat and my opponent can respond to it with minor positional concession and we still have a hard battle to fight from there. Buy my opponent doesn't make the response I expected because it turns out that response would get crushed and I totally missed that. Instead the opponent makes a different move that I easily saw would lose. Essentially, the other player did all the hard work for me!
Thats what i was trying to say but couldnt quite get the right words thank you Loomis.
There are a few games that I have considered myself lucky. For example: I'll be down in material by huge margins, but my opponent will make that horrible blunder that allows me to either catch up in material, or deliver the mate. There are only a couple of games that I consider myself playing brilliantly where no luck was involved... maybe about 2% of my games were all skill. The rest were logic and luck.
I believe that luck is involved in everything we do to some degree. In a chess one player who is normally the stronger player may be feeling sick or distracted for some reason and the other player wins as a result, but this is all part of the game and the reason why we play chess instead of looking at the rating. Sounds to me like your opponent is a poor loser.
cianlloyd wrote: Thats what i was trying to say but couldnt quite get the right words thank you Loomis.
I think we were writing at about the same time. Good to know that other people have had that same experience: "Surprise, your last move was brilliant!"
Luck is definitely involved in chess because we have a limited horizon as to how many moves we can see ahead. That is the reason we are always discovering things about a position we could not foresee. So our position often evolves into one that is favorable or unfavorable in unforeseen ways: that makes for a working definition of "luck". Our skill just increases our odds.
Nicely put Ricardo
Ofcourse there is some "luck" in chess as there is all games. Lets say I blunder but my opponent doesnt see the move that takes advantage of my blunder, I am "lucky" that he didnt see the move. I can be playing a much stronger player that I have no real chance of beating without some"luck" , he may make an uncharacteristic blunder and I win the game, wasnt I a bit lucky that he blundered?
Feb 11, 2008
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#14
orejano wrote:
I had a discussion with an user from another chess site the other day, and he says that I won a game against him because i was very lucky. I simply said that I was not. That there is no luck in chess. There just are people who play better than others and people who make more mistake in a game than others.
What do you think? There is luck in chess or not?.
There just are people who play better than others and people who make more mistake in a game than others.
This is where I believe the luck is. When an opponent falls into a trap, you are lucky. You are lucky he made the move and didn't see it. Everyone makes mistakes. I even think that GMs play with some luck, when both players know the book so well, and they both can analize the board perfectly, it's all a matter of who makes the mistake that changes the game.
Now to say that chess itself is luck. Or to say that you won by luck, is just bad sportsmanship, he was a sore loser. I am fairly new at playing chess at this level but I have been watching many games, I can see where the luck comes in. Whether it is not seeing the 8 moves forced to check or the 1 move that just simply gives the other person the advantage over peices and position. I still believe when it comes to anything, chess has the least amount of luck involved from any game, it's just luck is found everywhere.
I believe that it is very bad sportsmanship to blame a defeat on luck, your opponent shoild have just accepted that he lost. It may have been a bit unfortunate but to blame it down to you being lucky is very unfair.
I think there is a misconception here on what "luck" means. A man would say he has been lucky because something that was not under his control has happened and favored him somehow. The key of this definition is "not under his control". In a card games, for example, the cards that are dealed to the players are distributed randomly, with no influence from any player at the table. So getting good or bad cards is completely defined by how lucky each player is. In chess, there is no luck at all because there is no factor that is not under the influence of the players. The move that a player executes is under his complete responsibility, as all the information about the game being played (position, material, etc) is available for both players all the time.
Of course you can say that you were lucky because your oponent made a mistake, but the reason for your victory was not luck; the reason is that your oponent made a mistake (so it's his fault). Conceptually, in chess there is no "luck" variable as there is in other games such as cards or dice.
Feb 11, 2008
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#17
The harder you work, the more you learn, and the more you can see on the chessboard---the luckier you are. :D
Honestly, luck is a misnomer the way most people use the word. Is it luck that I put my pieces on the squares that do you the most damage, even when it looks like you are winning? No! However, often when people say, "you got lucky" that is what they are talking about. It's as if they say, "I would have beat you if your pieces weren't serendipitously on the right squares." I am also a swimmer and at a swim meet I once heard a fellow competitor's coach tell this competitor, "You would have won if you would have swam faster." REALLY!!! Now that's good coaching.
You got lucky on the chessboard? Same thing. There is no such thing as luck on the chessboard. No dice, no cards. Just you and your brain against me and my brain.
Jason
Chess is a math problem; the game itself contains no luck whatsoever. There is always a definite, correct answer to any position. Humans are the only element of chance involved. So yes, it can be lucky to have spotted a given move at the right moment, but no position is luckier than any other and that move was there the whole time.
Luck exist when you see that you made a terrible mistake and it goes unnoticed.
I had a discussion with an user from another chess site the other day, and he says that I won a game against him because i was very lucky. I simply said that I was not. That there is no luck in chess. There just are people who play better than others and people who make more mistake in a game than others.
What do you think? There is luck in chess or not?.