Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

There is such thing. If you play a losing move, you would be lucky to win the game.

Of course. Yes.
But there are different definitions of luck though.
One of them could involve variables one doesn't have direct control over.
Such as the quality of the opponent's play.
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Another idea is to try to think of situations outside of chess where luck isn't involved and could not be.
Luck refers to outcomes but not necessarily final outcomes.
If an outcome was deliberately and totally determined then could there ever be 'luck' involved?
I would say yes. Its hard to remove it from anything.
For example a computer adds two numbers together and gets the right answer.
Many might say: 'No luck there. Its totally determined.'
But - not really.
Here's why - the computer depended on not being interfered with.
So however unlikely it was that it could have been interfered with there's still an element of fortune in that it was not.
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For example there was no nuclear detonation vaporizing the computer before it did the job.
So it was 'lucky' that didn't happen.
Many might argue 'No! That's an External Factor!'
An Hbomb would be coming from External and becoming very Infernal and Internal ...
but some would claim that the computer adding correctly had no element of chance as far as that particular operation was concerned.
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I think luck can always be found in anything though.
For example the existence of computers at all in this time requires that various processes in history followed various allowing timelines otherwise computers wouldn't exist now.
Is there anything at all that is 'purely by chance' and anything at all that is 'purely determined'?
I would say the former outweighs and 'wins'.
Because if and when there's no 'sentience' around determining or trying to determine outcomes then how could outcomes be determined?
The debates between determinism and fatalism - well there's probably some famous ones.
Some could argue that sentience still isn't required for a determined outcome because the precise arrangement of all factors in the immediate past 'determines' the outcome at the next fundamental unit of time.
So some could argue that 'everything is determined' - but there's still the reality that the nature of the procession of determinations mostly cannot be known.
Which many don't react well to.
Or react to with lack of objectivity.

Very efficient remark by Dio there.
Yes - the o-person would need Dio to inform him as 'O' simply continues to rationalize that he's right about something because he says so. Such a tendency results in The Guy being constantly wrong. Its like a deaf person who can't hear himself speak. His speech becomes slurred. So - since The Guy can't hear his own errors his rationalizations become more and more slurred and he becomes more and more error-prone. Why can't he realize his own mistakes? Because he denies they exist. The 'tailpipe guy' has the same problem.

"Luck is subjective, and does not objectively exist in the logical construct of a game of chess the way many on this thread like to imagine."

This is demonstrated to be false. Let me attempt a logical proof:

A player has to choose from a limited set of options presented to him. The options represent a chess move. We assign three chess players to make a move: (1) a perfect computer calculating the optimal move deterministically, (2) an imperfect human who miscalculates, and (3) a random move generator. It is possible for all three players to arrive at the same move, the theoretically optimal one. This shows that, in some cases, skill differences may not determine the outcome, and probabilistic factors can play a role. This scenario demonstrates that luck can influence individual moves and outcomes, because the nature of a choice from multiple presented options always introduces luck as a factor.

Now if you can logically take this example apart and show why this does not demonstrate objective luck, you have a reasonable argument. What is it called when a miscalculating human or a random move generator arrive at the perfect solution, in case you don't call it luck?

It's not called anything, because it has never happened. Human beings don't arrive at perfect solutions that span entire games. They never will. Neither will a random move generator. They can choose between candidate moves, and one may be better than the next, but the human choices are not random, they are skill-based. A random move generator using current technology at speed will not play a perfect game of chess before the heat death of the universe, so...

This is why you had to capitulate last time, saying that a random move generator could play a perfect game of chess, but stipulating that it would be like winning 100 lotteries in a single lifetime. Since that is not a real or practical scenario, your attempt falls apart. In your mind, the 10 to the Nth power to one chance still means there's a chance, and so luck exists, but that same argument was made by Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.

When Carlsen or any super-GM loses to a random move generator, or even a 1200 rated player, you be sure and let me know. Then I will entertain your argument...as soon as I deal with the all the flying pigs, I mean.

@DiogenesDue

You should note that the explanation stated the three different players played "a perfect move", not a perfect game. This is because logically if you would consider a perfect game by a random move generator an event of luck - the game consists of single moves that are determined by a mechanism of randomness, which also must be considered individual events of luck. A single random move is an outcome in itself. After that Magnus Carlsen could take over and win (or lose) the game but the game would still have been influenced by an event of luck.

If you consent to this, we could move onto reviewing differences between an optimal outcome by a random generator and a miscalculating human, and why both should be viewed as events of luck. There is progress to be made here.

...I already told you, when a 2700 GM (or a 2700+ engine) loses to a 1500, I will seriously consider your premise worth discussing. If there's as much luck in chess as you imagine, then you have nothing to worry about, we'll be diving into it in no time.

@diogenesdue

A random threshold that is somehow supposed to define luck according to you, with no explanation. I guess thats a reasonable way to refuse a logical discussion I attempted. Also I don't remember making a claim regarding the "amount of luck" like you suggest here.

Oh well, you accept a blitz game?

I don't play on chess.com anymore since I became more active on the forums and started getting challenges from trolls on a regular basis. I haven't really played anything but votechess here for many years. It's a lose-lose proposition. If I won, they'd just try to hound me on the forums that much more. If I lost. they'd want rematches and accuse me of cheating, etc.

Now I play on a Lichess account that has no association with my chess.com account (I also have a an account there you would recognize, but a couple of people followed me over so I don't use that one anymore either). And that's the way it will stay...so I get the best of both worlds. Trolls can gnash their teeth here while I am peacefully enjoying chess elsewhere.

If votechess were not rife with cheating, I would still play votechess which (on a good team that discusses every move) have by far the most satisfying and educational games of chess you can play here. But they can't directly monitor the group games and they don't want to police the players on a team, so...they just let cheating run rampant there.

Fair enough, I also do most of my playing on Lichess. What I meant tho was your request for a game between a 1500 and a 2700 gm, that would justify the discussion for you. Would a blitz game qualify?

Logically though, any perfect move is merely a good move: one that doesn't change the objective game state assessment from a draw to a loss or from a win to a draw or a loss. Of course, a move that changes the assessment from a loss or a draw to a draw or a win is impossible.

If the game is a draw to start with, then any perfect move is one that doesn't change that to a loss. The point is that different players prefer different strategies and different types of game. Therefore many human games have consisted of perfect (that is, good) moves throughout. There is usually no objectively perfect move which is "better" than all others available and when moves are forced in a long term sense, it's usually possible to identify them by analysis.

So we often can't work out what a perfect move might be and it doesn't make sense to base any rational argument on a myth or a non-existent ideal wouldn't even be a useful ideal were it to be available.

I agree with you on the latter point. I've found that those who control vote chess games play what THEY want to play much of the time. It's useless.

Regarding the former point, when I beat people in blitz or when I used to beat them in Daily, virtually no-one ever accused me of cheating. I've always blocked those who trash talked, in any case and maybe that's a tiny minority and I blocked them all, more or less. I don't think it's a problem except for someone to whom it may happen for some secondary reason?

Elroch is correct as usual.
But controversy about determinism versus fatalism continues on through the centuries anyway.
There's even a kind of controversy about fatalism 'determining'.
Its called Fate.
'As Fate has it'.
Isaac Asimov discussed the idea of 'future history' in some of his books.
Theories about determining the future.
With an idea that it would be impossible to determine the changing mosaic of small details.
But that it is possible to 'steer' events. Even in a large-scale way.
Realism: Nobody can know the future to an exact degree. Regardless of how much it might appear to be the case. Nor steer the future in a way that is both exact and all-encompassing.
And the present cannot be known thoroughly.
The past? Not all the details.

Yes, I purposefully chose to take the meaning that does not continue the discussion, because I've already ended it twice ,

Blitz is to chess as ping pong is to tennis. Fast and exciting, but ultimately lacking.

Yes...an observant person would have seen that I already implied the secondary reason...the people that challenged me were usually trolls I had taken to task in the forums. You have a 2 on the front of your rating, so you naturally get a lot more blind challenges by people headhunting. It's not difficult to figure out.

That's a silly position, and based on your equally silly position on solving chess. Of course it does not require the same moves to win when the opposition is not playing perfect moves. Any schoolkid could tell you that.

If chess is a forced draw then there's a very high probably there's a margin for it and not a single series of perfect moves, but that margin is certainly not anywhere close to being discernable by you. Engines routinely massacre what passes for "perfect play" in humans, and they are still learning to trounce each other, ergo, there's no basis for you to set any thresholds whatsoever. You and I are light years away from being able to comment on what constitutes perfect play in any position more complicated than a basic endgame from Reuben Fine.

I'm far more intelligent than you are, Dio. I thought you might have learned that by now. You are certainly not able to explain WHY you think my position is silly with a properly reasoned argument, are you. 
I'm pretty sure you haven't understood any of what I explained to you. When will you grow up?

You have failed to show me up even once in a decade other than some nitpick about a word, so logically, that seems like a very dubious claim. When will you stop thinking you are smarter than everyone on the planet? Don't make me break out the links of you acting like you're God's gift to creation...your unilateral claims never do get you anywhere.