I have been playing poker for ~ 1 year and now trying chess.
So far i have played about 50 chess games.

And i think that in a chess, the same as in poker is chance and luck element. (smaller, but is)

For example:

If i set a trap for my opponent in chess and there are two possibilities:
1) He will fall in to my trap and i kill his king.
2) He will see my trap and not fall in to it.

By setting a trap i still have to HOPE that my opponent will not see it.

In poker we can not know opponents next move and cards he holds.
In chess we can see all the "cards" , but we still can not 100% sure know what opponent will do next.

When a baseball pitcher throws a great curve ball and the batter swings and misses, is it the skill of the pitcher or the luck of the pitcher?

Ur mixing up probability with ability.

and so is the op - your opponent not seeing a trap isnt so much a function of you being lucky as your opponent being bad at chess

On Friday i played a game where i was pressing most of the time, but my opponent defended well and at the end he could have played an active move in the double rook ending that saved him a clear draw despite being 2 pawns down but instead he went for a lost pawn endgame. Was it a result of constant pressure? Maybe. Would a better player have played the right move? Probably. Do i consider myself lucky to have won the game? Yes, a bit. He defended well against 4-5 critical ideas, on a better day he also saves the last.
Of course blunders are a function of playing strength but i still think i'm lucky if my opponent commits one. After all, playing strength has also a statistical component to it - blunder frequency.

But all that doesn't make chess a game of chance. But i would certainly say that some sort of luck can be involved, luck in the sense the word is commonly used.

there's definitely something you could call "luck".

let's say I am in a worse position and it is clear that I have a choice of two moves. After both moves the play is going to be quite forcing, but I can't calculate which one is better and I can't see any "principled" reason to play one over the other so I pick one more or less at random. I don't think this scenario is very far-fetched.

It turns out one move is losing and one would have drawn the game. If I play the drawing move, did I get "lucky"? You have to say the answer is yes. Of course if I was a better player I would have evaluated both moves correctly and made the better move anyway, but here I got lucky that the complications were in my favour.

Likewise, if I played the losing move and lost, you would have to say my opponent got lucky. Yes he may have played well and put me in a position where I could make a mistake, but he was still one lucky decision away from only getting a draw.

If your chess abiliy is high you will more likely make the right move. The better you are the better the expected outcome of each of your moves. As your ability goes to perfect you will always make the correct move. Luck does not exist, This is why chess players can be ranked in a way poker players never can. This is also why a computer can win againsted the best chess player but not necessarily againsted the best poker player, but wait didn't I just say you can't rank poker players so how can a computer play againsted the best poker player??!! Chew on that one

Chess rankings do also have a statistical component, ask Ivanchuk.

I have always said there is good luck in chess, but not bad luck.

if you want to say luck doesn't exist in chess you should also believe that luck doesn't exist in bowling or snooker or golf. After all, if you are good enough you will make the right shot every time. The bounce of a golf ball or the interaction between 10 packed snooker balls is too complicated for humans to calculate, and that's why we call it lucky when you get a good break or a good bounce. It's the same with chess.

You shouldn't even believe that there is luck in craps!

I'm capable of rolling 7's at will

Also I agree with Roundtower 100%, couldn't have explained it better myself, it boggles my mind that people ever argue with that logic. Of course there is luck in chess, a small amount but it exists.

lmao vn wp RT

Fwiw, I like to think of the small amount of luck in chess with a different word: "circumstance"

You need a decent amount of circumstance to get first in a tournament.

For example:

-A couple of your opponents could play opening systems that you are very prepared for, while the rest avoid systems you didn't study that closely.
-An opponent who is usually quite the "tough out" has an off day and loses without putting up much resistance against you.
-You get more white's than black's in the tournament, and you prefer having the first move.
etc, etc

Of course there are luck involved.
If you play an equil opponent where you are expected to score 50%, you cant possibly know whether this particular game will be the 33% that ends in a "normal" draw or one of the other 67% lucky or unlucky outcomes.

I would agree that there's luck in chess, but it's much different than the luck in poker -- not only in degree, but in type. Making the right move for the wrong reason, or for no reason at all, can be considered lucky, but there's nothing in chess equivalent to correctly putting all your money in and then flipping a coin to decide who wins.

There is no luck in the game of chess itself, unlike poker. If God played chess with himself, there would be no luck involved, whereas if he played poker there would be. The "luck" in chess has only to do with the players that play, but it doesn't exist in the game itself.

The Taliban banned chess in Afghanistan because they believed that chess has an element of chance to it and chance based games are forbidden under a strict fundamentalist interpretation of sharia.

In thinking about different games, sports, activities, chess is the only one that I can think of that has zero element of chance or the most minimal element of the same. In other sports there are clear elements of chance.

Golf: perfect drive and ball ends up in divot
Pool: break is largely based on chance
Running: lane assignments, weather conditions, lane conditions.
Soccer: how the ball reacts to certain imperfections in the grass or turf.

OP, if you plan a great trap and your opp doesn't fall for it you should take into account that he might not fall for it and hopefully your position isn't lost as a result. It isn't really pure chance but rather a calculated risk.

In blitz chess maybe the clock works better for the opponent or maybe the board is ****ed up in your end when the opponent can just push the clock and say adjust.

OP and some others ITT have trouble with the definition of "chance and luck" as applied to games.

Or maybe YOU have a problem with recognizing what OP and others are trying to talk about.

+1

This is such a bad way to think about chess. If you are ever playing a move which you believe hurts your position unless your opponent misses something, you're doing it wrong. There is no "calculated risk" in chess, unless by "calculated risk" you mean "I calculated that it only appears risky."

I disagree. This is a great way of thinking. Improves your rating at least.

There's no luck in perfect information games, such as chess.

Your play should be based on the foundation that you expect your opponent to play perfectly. Thus, your play shouldn't be based on the "chance" your opponent misreads the situation or doesn't see the trap you've laid for him.

Maybe you can improve your rating from 1000 to 1400 by playing moves which are objectively bad unless your opponent misses a trap. But playing in such a way creates all sorts of bad habits in your thinking. You have to play moves which improve your position, and the traps are only there to force your opponent to play moves which yield to you some small edge.

If they happen to not see the trap, all the better, but it's not like you should be sitting there going "I hope he misses this one."

This is sort of simplistic. Of course you are right wrt simple tactical or positional traps, but a huge chunk of modern chess is based on moves that put pressure on your opponent but create significant risk for the player too.

7. g4 in the Qc2 anti-Meran is a good example.



That move creates serious problems within white's pawn structure but is compensated by the pressure exerted on black. It's possible that if chess is solved, we may find out 7. g4 is simply a blunder. However, with our imperfect understanding of the game, this is a perfectly good move. Ditto for the entire Botvinnik variation of the semi-slav.