Kasparov would also win ZERO!! if the freeze outs were deep enough and they were not playing no limit (since he could just move in every hand).

Assuming we take each example as perfectly true, all you've proven here is that the upper limit of the effect of luck in chess must be smaller than the difference in skill between Kasparov and Ivey. That's a long, long way from proving that it is zero.

I think I have a better chance at beating Allen at HU match 200 BB deep than in a chess game.

That may be the dumbest statement I've ever heard.

Did you hear the one where the guy claimed that because the world champion would never lose to an amateur, there must be no luck at all?

Yeah, what does that guy know about poker, anyway?

The misconception with that poker analogy is that poker in theory is infinite in span, there is no beginning or end... so its not a matter of stack depth but a matter of volume, in any finite round of poker however there is always a >0% the worst player wins. It is entirely possible for two people to be equal but their 'poker lives' are finite... chess is actually alot more finite and simple, because it is digitalised, whereas as deep stacked pot limit for instance, you have analogous unknown perfectly undefinable ranges. It is simply clear that neither game actually has any luck at all.

And btw Ivey could get lucky in that he by mistake plays the perfect game by choosing random moves, and win, unless kasparov has reached some kind of gto equilibrium in his ability.

im going to type a novel in my keyboard maybe I end up writing the next Crime and punishment if I get lucky enough choosing the wrong words by mistake.

You could but you'd have to get pretty lucky.

I agree with OP's statement.

In the summer I played in a couple of open tournaments, and during one of them I spent some time with stronger players than me. Specifically, one 2600+ rated grandmaster told me his views on the subject, which convinced me. He said:
People often say there is no luck in chess, but the truth is that there is a lot of it. For example, the two opponents are analysing the current position and they both decide to play into a variation which leads to a position evaluated as approximately equal by both players. They stop their analysis at this point. A few moves later, that position actually appears on the board. It turns out that there is an unlikely tactical trick, which both players had missed earlier, but now they both see that it leads to a win for one of them. The luckiest of the two goes on to play his combination and win the game, even though at no point during the game did he outcalculate his opponent.

Also, blundering in a won position in which there was an easy and obvious path to the win, (perhaps even seen by the player, but not chosen for some reason) is usually considered unlucky.

That said, luck can play a bigger role when the two players are of close playing strength. If one is much stronger than the other, he will usually win even if he is "unlucky" enough to miss something and get a worse position at some point.

Didn't mean to be jerky but saying anyone beats anyone 1000 times in a row in poker is nuts.

I think the main, practical, sense in which chess has plenty of luck is that it is unfathomably complex and there are plenty of positions per game where no human could possibly work out the best move in the required time. You therefor take your best guess and sometimes get lucky that it works out and sometimes you don't.

"Sure, but theoretically you could work it all out and thus there's no luck" you might say. Well don't forget in poker the shuffle isn't truly random nor is the RNG on your online site so if you were really that super magic Q continuum type of gifted dude that can solve chess you might be able to figure out what cards are comming as well.

Well do you believe Ivey would always win at least 501/1000? What if the stacks were 1000 times what you're imagining them to be? Also the freezeout is not the final word in what constitutes a poker game. If they played every day for a year with unlimited bankrolls Ivey may win 1000/1000 years.

I agree that luck in chess only applies to players at least vaguely similar in skill. Few people on this board could be lucky enough to beat the world champ as long as you discount stuff like the chandelier falling on his head.

It's funny though, I do feel that someone rated 1000 might beat an 1800 but 2000 can never beat 2800? Maybe I'm wrong about something or maybe ratings work differently at the top? Well, I'll at least say that a 1000 will never, ever beat Anand.

The magnitude between errors between players rated 1800 and 2800 is huge and the reason why that holds true. (obviously using "never" in a broad sense) Outplaying a very strong player usually is a process of trying to wrestle down someone who is fighting back very hard - as opposed to winning a game-ending amount of material or getting to checkmate due to a blunder.

It applies even when 2 players are far off in skill, you just see it way way less.


1)There are a finite amount of moves in chess
2)You can 'randomly' pick a move every turn and by chance pick the best one

Thus...

3)LUCK EXISTS IN CHESS!

On the more practical level an 1800 player should be able to pick out his best 5 moves or so on any given position. He may very well pick 'the best' move every time or a lot of the time for reasons no at all other than he had to pick one. How can this be defined as ANYTHING but luck?


The people that insist it does not exist seem to use the argument that the chess player technically controls everything that occurs, therefore it cannot have luck. I don't see what 'control' has to do with this. When baseball players hit line drives right at people we say they got unlucky, we don't say "he should have controlled better where he hit it", you might as well say a poker player should have shuffled the deck differently, or he should be able to remember the micro-differences on the backs of playing cards. No one can do this, no one can see 30 moves ahead in a chess game either.

Right, and it is unlikely to affect the outcome of the whole game but in poker, 3 lucky hands could win a heads up for a clueless player against the sharpest poker mind.

Chess luck can swing a game but the difference is so small that we never see it affecting a match situation.

I few it very simply. In a game with luck you can make all the correct decisions and still lose (which happens in poker). In a game without luck, you cannot make all the correct decisions and still lose - this is true in chess. So chess doesn't have any luck in the traditional (which I think should be the correct) definition.

So making correct decisions and losing is the "Traditional" definition of luck, but making incorrect choices and winning isn't?

This is true but only if you make the optimal decision every move. Can we agree on white's optimal opening move? Black's response? White's response to that? and on and on? Has chess been solved - does the optimal game lead to a win for white or is it a draw? If it can be solved what happens next? Chess players switch to backgammon and then 100 years later switch to poker? There is luck in chess.

I always find this argument stupid. The people that will claim there is luck in chess are going to be the same people to say there's luck in every aspect of life and everything we do. Everything is statistical and hence will make it appear that everything is luck.

chess is pure skill

Opponent: "Good luck"
Nikachu: "It's all skill"

Nikachu just failed quantum mechanics.

"Good luck"/"It's all skill" is true of poker too. There's a lot of luck in poker, well quite a bit. There's a bit in chess too. This has little to do with the statistical nature of events though - which of course is true but that isn't the argument that is being made.

When I was 14, I had a match with my team and on board#1 there was this female who came from an other country and didn`t have a rating at all(She crushed the 3rd highest class of the regionalchampionships with 9/9, she was then about 2100-2200). My team seated me on board#1 because well no one really had a chance against her at all and also I was known to play much better when under "pressure" or when "challenged"(Also I was pretty known to suck hard against bad players, my rating had such ridiculous swings).
I totally crushed her, when I looked into her eyes I saw that she was desperate, she gained some momentum and put me under pressure and I started calculating.
There were a couple of variants which looked pretty scary. Lets call them A B C D E F.
I started calculating with A and moved on when I came on to F I was under Timepressure and still calculated super deep but had to move now.
I made my move and lost because of variant F. A/B/C only looked scary but could`ve been easily defended.
So if I had started calculating with F instead of A, I would`ve won the game.

Luck for her?

i look at it this way:

a game between humans, particularly non-GM level humans, there is certainly "luck" involved when your opponent blunders or does not make the proper the analysis or you set up a tactic that is visible but that they miss.

the "game of chess" has no such thing as luck as it is a theoretically solvable game that would end in a draw.