Is there such thing as "luck" in chess?

It seems you're good to go, since the biggest disparity I ran into was a GM losing to a 1700. It was GM Emre Can in the 2010 Olympiad. He blundered mate actually. These things happen, but the bigger the disparity, also the rarer the match up.

Oh come on. You have some positive qualities .... decent rhetorical ability and self-confidence are two of them. You can be pleasant to people you happen to like and who don't challenge you. You are not a great intellect. That's just a fact and I'm sure you actually know it. You're not stupid so don't act like you are because a lot of people here think you are.

I wasn't making a claim. I was explaining my view about something. You couldn't understand what I was talking about even though I was being clear and keeping it simple. End of.

You and a handful of crackpots are not "a lot of people". I don't claim to be a great intellect. That's your (unilateral) claim.

Given that you falter on a regular basis in your arguments with myself and many other posters here, and chose to ally yourself with some of the most willfully ignorant posters on the forums, I'm not inclined to pay much attention to your observations about me. But rest assured, I will still pay attention to your observations on scientific topics, etc. and keep calling you out every time your "great intellect" gets something wrong. You'll notice that it happens frequently.

I'll recap for you, so try to actually understand what I'm talking about.

The question as to whether "chess is or is not drawn with best play" is nonsensical, when we don't know what "best play is". It's merely hypothetical. The question changes when we posit a similar question regarding "good play", which we can define as consisting only of "good moves" which themselves are defined as "moves which do not change a game state asssesment" (or other words to that effect).

Current positional assessment cannot be altered in a positive way by any possible move. We can only make good moves which maintain the assessment, or those that reduce the game state assessment on the scale "win -draw - loss". Note that this applies also in the hypothetiocal situation where the initial position is a win for either black or for white. Therefore it isn't at all contentious.

Unfortunately, the theory, such as it is, has been addressed in an unhelpful way by so-called experts, which is why the nonsensical obsession with "is chess a draw with best play" has come about. In exactly the same manner, many people here refer to their rating as "ELO" even though C.c uses Glicko, which is an inferior (less accurate) rating system to ELO but which approximates to a potential rating more quickly. Nothing is going to get people to stop talking about their "ELO" and it's the same with "is chess a draw with best play?"

You have to learn to think hypothetically, which means considering all the implications of an hypothetical premise such as "chess is a draw given good moves on both sides" or "chess is a win for (either side) given good moves etc". Then it's necessary to determine what the evidence is. Evidence does not consist of some person's hare-brained hypothesis that "there might be a zugzwang for either side". That is not evidence. There is no evidence that chess is a forced win. All the evidence we have is that chess is drawn. We can only go off evidence. If the evidence is systemised and a theoretical structure is found which incorporates it, then theory may be built on that structure and people may then talk of "theoretical proofs that chess is drawn".

But ALL theory is based on evidence, or it's worthless and cannot be considered to be "theory". There are some people who don't understand that. In return, I'm not going to place trust in their intellectual abilities. I would not wish them to be in any position of leadership where their decisions could affect the futures of us all. Obviously, they are not going to be in a position where they can influence people who themselves are intellectually accomplished. It really does boil down to that. If you talk rubbish, no matter what your rhetorical ability or debating skills, you will never influence cleverer people than you. Only duller people. I'm sure a great future might be built on influencing dull people. That's called advertising and propaganda.

Wrong thread, Sherlock. This is "luck in chess".

Well, I know I said it would happen frequently...but damn.

The two subjects are very strongly related with one another. You answered me (badly) and I think that argument is over now, as is the one about luck in chess. It's been definitively shown that luck exists in chess as it exists everywhere there's a human observer to interpret apparent chance events as luck or bad luck. Equally, I have demonstrated that solving chess isn't about some fake theory advanced by half-baked "experts in game theory" and neither does the argument depend on some specious claim that chess MIGHT be a forced win for black or for white, since there's no evidence at all for it. Pigs might fly. Arguments like that also depend on luck .... that there's someone dim enough to believe you.

Also the discussion has apparently moved to one on Risk in the solving chess thread and you're happily talking about Risk variants there. I didn't want to disturb your concentration.

Lol. Nothing quite so amusing as someone pontificating about how smart they are and then watching them turn around and walk right into an open manhole...unless it's watching them say "I meant to do that..." afterwards.

I got one: You win by default, because your opponent showed up wearing the wrong trousers.

Victory, through no fault of your own.

That would be lucky.

You've never played table tennis properly? They're equal. I preferred tennis but they use identical skill sets. In each case one finds oneself hitting a ball perfectly even though one can't see it at all. Bad analogy, although I agree that slow chess is the most challenging and stimulating.

Your opponent set fire to his trousers during the game and in his anguish, resigned by mistake?

Your powers of invention bear no relation to a metaphorical account of our past interactions; except, as usual, in your fevered imagination.

I expect you'll be trying to convince your very limited group of admirers that you'd meant to win your arguments every time but were tricked into always saying the wrong thing?

The reality seems to be that you flounder around making personal comments and then if the other person replies in kind it's "mummy he's being nasty to me!! He started it!!"

Luck in chess comes when you play a beginner.

Luck in chess is actually a miss, mistake or blunder of your opponent.

OK, then on that premise, what can cause an opponent's blunder? Is it always a lack of skill on his part? There are no unrelated-to-chess events that can cause a blunder?
I once went for a short walk between moves in a chess league match because my opponent was taking a long time to think. I saw someone having a heart attack at the wheel of his car, which was parked. It was a long time ago when very few of us had mobile phones. I went back into the playing hall and stopped the game and asked who had a mobile phone. I suggested to people to stop their clocks. The man's life was saved after a protracted spell of first aid by the paramedics in the ambulance. One of our team lost on time because he hadn't stopped his clock. So his opponent was lucky. It isn't the only time I've been involved in something like that in a chess match.

It's a matter of luck whether you get hit by a meteorite.

It's a consequence of the close to deterministic path taken by the meteorite, but the reason it is still luck is that you don't have detailed knowledge of the state of all meteorites.

In both this and the chess example, "luck" is associated with your uncertain state of knowledge.

As another example, it's a matter of luck to a specific soldier whether he gets hit by sniper fire (once he is already doing everything he can to avoid it within the constraints of his role).

From the sniper's point of view it is quite different: it is a matter of who he points his gun at, and whether he operates his weapon skilfully.

Different states of knowledge.

I would think that that's about right, much of the time, but unforseen events can play their part in less obvious ways than having an elephant land on your head because it escaped from a zoo on the top of a hill nearby.

They can.

Hi

Really, just stop...it's getting embarrassing now. In what possible way could you interpret anything that was said as "running to mummy"? Rather the reverse.

If I say you make frequent mistakes and that I am going to keep calling you on them (observation + statement), and you turn right around and do it *immediately* afterwards by making a laughingly long-winded post on the wrong thread about the wrong topic...that's not me making personal comments. That's you being you. Seriously...if you are going to pontificate like the Pope on Easter Sunday, make sure you are in the right basilica.

The topic is about luck intrinsic to the game of chess. Not luck in general. Thanks for the sterling example of something that is *not* luck in chess. Heart attacks are not part of chess. Clocks are not even part of chess, only a rules construct added on top.

Even if the rest of your example were applicable, your specific example would still be incorrect. Your teammate not stopping his clock was not "luck", his opponent "won" due to your teammate's lack of ability to multitask during a perceived crisis. If anyone should have lost, it is you. But rather than just asking "is there a doctor in the house or someone with a mobile phone?" and then immediately returning to the man forthwith, not stopping to explain to everybody else why the clocks should be stopped, your first instinct in this anecdote was to cause a dramatic scene beyond what was necessary and ensure your own interests were protected and that everyone knew you had saved the day. How very you.

"The bank is being robbed! I say to you, good sirs...the bank is being robbed!"

"Miss, can you just finish out my transaction, you know, since it's on the screen already...thank you ever so much. Oops, better get down, they're turning this way...don't worry about me, I have been known to beat the tar out of 3 strong pugilists at once..."

"No no, no need for applause, really, I must insist."

Given your past stories about also saving people that collapse in restaurants, I am going have to assume that your area of England has an awful lot of coronary issues.