just thinking about a game where every time you take, your opponent rolls a dice and if he gets a 6, he takes your piece instead of the other way round, only exception is that the king always wins when he takes.

firstly, just thinking of the implications of this, obv queens can't really take pawns anymore, anything else. what sorts of games would players play?

secondly, what sort of odds would a grandmaster give a relative n00b (say 1300 player) per game.

thirdly, how similar is this to poker, where there is a huge amount of strategic play, and possibility to outplay opponents, but also with a luck element.

One could just roll the dice to begin with, and see who wins right there.

The most random thing I've seen in chess is Fischer-random.

Affecting the outcome of a (serious) game of chess with dice would be like having the US Supreme Court vote on who would be the next US president. Nobody would ever do that, because we're all chess players.

I don't think anything like this would ever really work. The reason poker is successful as a gambling game is because its incredibly simple, the luck is enormous but well disguised and on any given hand a guy who just learned how to play can win a huge pot vs Phil Ivey. In poker some of the biggest donators today are now playing 21/18 with 6% 3-bet and almost certainly read 2+2. They keep playing because they think they're playing well but just really unlucky. I'm certain many fish feel similar to a certain degree.

But in chess, so long as at the core its the same game, that would never really happen. If you lose every single one of your pieces but 'suck out' on the Queen/Rook and end up winning the game because of that you're never going to feel like you did well or had a real chance even if you do win. Its definitely not something you're going to want to bet meaningful amounts of $ on. Many fish are not fish because they are idiots, but just because they haven't really bothered to learn much about the game and feel they play fine as is. You're never going to get that in chess since its always going to be abundantly clear when you're being beat down regardless of how much 'luck' is artificially injected into the game.

It has too much think-ness in it for the inclusion of dice. It would be lop-sided.

Aren't games of luck won by averages?

When I was 22, I was into chess, and had an early-days computer (a Heathkit) to play against, and I played against it at something like a 7-ply depth, win-some lose-some. I remember how I felt about the game. I thought the thing to do was to work at it and add more plys. I found it to have no sense of fascination and mentally noted it as endless, boring ply depths.

Decades later, I'm looking at the game again for the first time since. I am fascinated by what I am seeing. It doesn't exactly look like plys this time. It looks like something more appreciable. There are various openings, and each one is its own world. I am liking and entertaining the idea of mastering sets of plays, and of seeing how various situations play out. It seems like some degree of mastery, however small, is just more fascinating than ply depths.

And it occurs to me today that I do not regret having been 22, either because I wouldn't be able to be fascinated now if I had not conducted those exercises then, or because I have no regrets. I know the feeling of wanting "dice", which is probably why I created Boardwalk Games (another thread), because there was thinking but there was luck in it, and that could have always been the cause of what happened in the game. But I don't think I ever stopped thinking and here I am today, looking at chess again, and finding it the source of some fascination.

Cheers, Mark

i was not really thinking about this game as an option, it was just a thought experiment.

also how is being in a losing game and getting lucky vs a grandmaster different from sucking out on phil ivey.

Rolling dice is as subtle as sledgehammer. It has too artificial of feel and just wouldn't be fun. You can't just inject luck into a game who's nature is not luck based.

I played a great variant of chess a few weeks ago: 5-minute games where the clock is faced away from the players. Every time your clock gets down to a multiple of 30 seconds, the arbiter removes the next piece you move. So you might lose a pawn that opens lines for you, or you might lose a queen or even your king. There's some skill in judging when the 30-second mark will come, and whether you should move a pawn or risk moving a bigger piece, but there's also a lot of luck because you can never be certain.

I don't think it's a terribly deep game, but a fun variant.

You don't have to suck out on Phil Ivey to destroy him in a single session. Constantly flop air when he flops hands, and flop showdown value on boards he's likely to bluff on and you will destroy him and probably feel like you outplayed him on top of it.

In chess unless you completely change the rules of the game you're almost never going to feel like you outplayed your opponent unless you actually did outplay him.

so if you lose your king, you lose the game?

Does removing the piece mean that that's your move?

What about hte problem of discovered checks when removing the piece?

Hey guys, in ancient times, chess used to be played with dice! There are various logistical problems with that though...in my biased opinion, roulette chess is very fun

yes, if you lose your king you lose the game

your piece is removed after your move, i.e. after the move where your clock hits 4.30 (or whatever). So your move could be just removing your piece, or it could be removing your piece and a piece of your opponent's you captured.

there isn't a "problem" with discovered checks. If you discover a check on your own king, you lose the game (I expect....it never came up). If you discover a check on your opponent's king, good for you.

I've also played chess with dice where you roll and move the indicated piece, that may be a better way to formally introduce a luck element to the game (if you can't move it you roll again or pass, depending on the rules). I doubt jen is right that chess was originally played that way though!

I'm not saying chess was always played with dice until it first showed up in Europe c.900 or till the new rules formulated c.1500, but there are historical references to the mixing of chess & dice all the way back to India. Anyone interested in details check out Murray's History of Chess tome.

People don't donate their money to the poker community because the game involves luck. They donate because the game has a broken feedback mechanism.