Art or Science ?

[thetank]

The human mind bing unable to extrapolate a given middlegame position into it's exponentially numerous consequences. A lot of the moves will be largely based on positional understanding and feel. The realtive likelyhood of the later consequences of many moves, even at the GM level, are unknown when the move is played.

[RED-DOG]

I wouldn't worry about it. Chess is very similar game to poker in several respects. Also, many of the posters here are pretty decent chess players.


Personally I'm fascinated that a luck element exists in chess, even though it is a game of complete information.

Not just your opponent missing an important move or something like that, but the luck factor coming into play in your own moves too.

The human mind bing unable to extrapolate a given middlegame position into it's exponentially numerous consequences. A lot of the moves will be largely based on positional understanding and feel. The realtive likelyhood of the later consequences of many moves, even at the GM level, are unknown when the move is played.



When people are bemoaning their bad luck at cards, you will often here someone say something like, "you want a game with no luck where the best player wins all the time, go play chess."

It's a pet hate of mine. Why have more than two games to decide the world champion if this were true?

The only time I ever saw luck come into play in a chess game was during the miners strike of 1974. Ted Heath pulled the plug on TV at about 7:30pm every night in an effort to save energy, so to combat the boredom, 5 of us clubbed up and bought a chess set. We played 10p a game, winner stop on.

Losing was dreadful, not only were you 10p out of pocket, you had rail 3 chess games before you got another turn.

This particular night, my uncle Dennis had me done up like a kipper, the result was merely a formality, it was mate in 3 moves. I reached out to knock over my king in the traditional gesture of surrender, but as I did so, I inadvertently flicked a piece of sausage from the fork of my brother Tracy, who was sitting next to me having his dinner on his knee.

The bit of sausage landed in my uncle Dennis's lap, and Cindy, a small black and tan terrier jumped up to retrieve it. Much to Tracy's dismay, the bit of sausage was a goner within a second, and in the process, one of my uncle Dennis's knackers suffered considerable collateral damage. He reacted by kicking the chess board up into the air.

I immediately demanded a rematch.

He whined and argued for all he was worth, we had the "It's not fair, you know I would have won" and "I can put the pieces back exactly as they were" speeches and everything, but I was having none of it.

We played a rematch, and with my uncle Dennis on "I wuz robbed"  damaged knacker tilt, I won the rematch easily.

So I can confirm, there is an element of luck in chess.

[ShatnerPants]

I wouldn't worry about it. Chess is very similar game to poker in several respects. Also, many of the posters here are pretty decent chess players.


Personally I'm fascinated that a luck element exists in chess, even though it is a game of complete information.

Not just your opponent missing an important move or something like that, but the luck factor coming into play in your own moves too.

The human mind bing unable to extrapolate a given middlegame position into it's exponentially numerous consequences. A lot of the moves will be largely based on positional understanding and feel. The realtive likelyhood of the later consequences of many moves, even at the GM level, are unknown when the move is played.



When people are bemoaning their bad luck at cards, you will often here someone say something like, "you want a game with no luck where the best player wins all the time, go play chess."

It's a pet hate of mine. Why have more than two games to decide the world champion if this were true?

The only time I ever saw luck come into play in a chess game was during the miners strike of 1974. Ted Heath pulled the plug on TV at about 7:30pm every night in an effort to save energy, so to combat the boredom, 5 of us clubbed up and bought a chess set. We played 10p a game, winner stop on.

Losing was dreadful, not only were you 10p out of pocket, you had rail 3 chess games before you got another turn.

This particular night, my uncle Dennis had me done up like a kipper, the result was merely a formality, it was mate in 3 moves. I reached out to knock over my king in the traditional gesture of surrender, but as I did so, I inadvertently flicked a piece of sausage from the fork of my brother Tracy, who was sitting next to me having his dinner on his knee.

The bit of sausage landed in my uncle Dennis's lap, and Cindy, a small black and tan terrier jumped up to retrieve it. Much to Tracy's dismay, the bit of sausage was a goner within a second, and in the process, one of my uncle Dennis's knackers suffered considerable collateral damage. He reacted by kicking the chess board up into the air.

I immediately demanded a rematch.

He whined and argued for all he was worth, we had the "It's not fair, you know I would have won" and "I can put the pieces back exactly as they were" speeches and everything, but I was having none of it.

We played a rematch, and with my uncle Dennis on "I wuz robbed"  damaged knacker tilt, I won the rematch easily.

So I can confirm, there is an element of luck in chess.

You say luck,

I say precise devious preplanning.  Thinking 2 moves ahead.

Physically executed to perfection.

[Jon MW]

luck

  • noun 1 success or failure apparently brought by chance. 2 chance considered as a force causing success or failure. 3 good fortune.

  • verb informal 1 (luck into/upon) chance to find or acquire. 2 (luck out) N. Amer. succeed due to good luck.

The human mind bing unable to extrapolate a given middlegame position into it's exponentially numerous consequences. A lot of the moves will be largely based on positional understanding and feel. The realtive likelyhood of the later consequences of many moves, even at the GM level, are unknown when the move is played.

I think that Tank's point is that when 2 players (at any level) get to an end game in chess - the exact layout of the board is not what either of them have planned for, they have not been specifically working towards that point. Both of them have been using their positional knowledge and feel (and tactical and strategic nous) to make it likely that they will be in a winning position in the end game.

They use their skill to make it more likely, but as they cannot by themselves engineer that winning position then it can only occur with some element of good fortune.

(Tank may be able to explain it better - particularly if I've just got the wrong end of the stick)

[steeveg]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

[thetank]

I think you explained it much better than I did Jon. That's exactly what I meant.

[gatso]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

I agree with all of that but isn't a lapse in concentration by your opponent lucky for you?

[steeveg]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

I agree with all of that but isn't a lapse in concentration by your opponent lucky for you?

imo ,part of the skill of being a decent chess player is concentration. if one of the players is liable to the odd lapse over a long game, i cant say the other player who has held his concentration has got lucky.

[Jon MW]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

I agree with all of that but isn't a lapse in concentration by your opponent lucky for you?

imo ,part of the skill of being a decent chess player is concentration. if one of the players is liable to the odd lapse over a long game, i cant say the other player who has held his concentration has got lucky.

But it definitely isn't down to your skill that he made a mistake.

Also, if he has a lapse of concentration at one part of the game and makes a mistake, he can still recover.
If he makes the mistake at a different point of the game - he's doomed.
You're lucky if it's the second rather than the first.

[thetank]

Poker has a very low threshold of competence it is true. We've all heard of it taking a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. It is true that a complete noob to the game could beat the best player in the world after about 60 seconds of coaching.

I'm unsure how this argument extrapolates to saying that there is no luck involved in other games.

A professional football side could beat the high school girls team 1000 times out of 1000. Does this mean there's no luck in football?

[steeveg]

in football no team can have total control over the ball,rebounds,the wind all sorts can happen to change a game, a chess player has total control of the board, if the chess player is good enough he will win

[WYSINWYG]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

I agree with all of that but isn't a lapse in concentration by your opponent lucky for you?

I am entering the USPGA tour next year, lucky for Tiger I'm sh!t at golf. >lot of luck in golf.

I think even though there is luck in poker there is a TON of room for skill in poker. Many of the attributes that lead to a win are not peculiar to poker though, like concentration, focus, patience, determination, cojones.
I also think that what a lot of decent poker players do is psychology: study someone's behaviour repeatedly, attribute it to a process going on in their bonce, and then predict future actions from it and understand future thought processes by means of it. Although it aint in a lab it certainly is psychology, and psychology is a science, last time I looked.

[FuglyBaz]

there is a lot of luck in poker,and even a top pro can be beaten hu by a beginner,
this would never happen in chess. luck would never play a part in the game. a grand master would beat a beginner 1000 times out of 1000.
the only time a poor player will beat a good player is if the good player is
not taking the game serious and does not concentrate on the all the moves he is making.
if 2 average players of the same standard play a game of chess,its mostly lack of concentration which leads to a mistake that decides the game.imo thats a flaw in the players game not luck

I agree with all of that but isn't a lapse in concentration by your opponent lucky for you?

I am entering the USPGA tour next year, lucky for Tiger I'm sh!t at golf. >lot of luck in golf.

I think even though there is luck in poker there is a TON of room for skill in poker. Many of the attributes that lead to a win are not peculiar to poker though, like concentration, focus, patience, determination, cojones.
I also think that what a lot of decent poker players do is psychology: study someone's behaviour repeatedly, attribute it to a process going on in their bonce, and then predict future actions from it and understand future thought processes by means of it. Although it aint in a lab it certainly is psychology, and psychology is a science, last time I looked.

The fact that the online games have got ridiculously tough within the space of two or three years tells us ALL that there is a lot of skill involved. I do believe that skill can only be employed against competent players though. There isnt much point bluffing players who call down to the river with sod all, for example. things you may do against a solid thinking player who will fold 2nd pair sometimes. Or things like stop and go bluffs where same principle applies - the fish will call with bottom pair because he/she has something.

Poker is definately a science, I agree with the above quote. It is science (or more appropriately, maths!) that has created a tough to beat poker game online. Pot odds, implied odds, reverse implied odds, pokerHUD, pokertracker, and whatever things have been introduced to millions of players over the years. Maths in poker hax got more complex with more reasons to call shoves with junk, or to push yourself with junk thanks to a little something called Fold Equity.

Poker is cold calculation adn instinct and instinct is psychological, so no way is it an art form. I realise this contradicts what I say about chess, but the game of chess is elegant, and some of the chess compositions are just beautiful. You cant get compositions in poker that are beautiful.

[thetank]

in football no team can have total control over the ball,rebounds,the wind all sorts can happen to change a game, a chess player has total control of the board, if the chess player is good enough he will win

Total control of what moves he makes yes, total control of their later consequences no.
You do see the  intellectual equivalent of a dodgy rebound, cruel deflection, lucky bounce, dodgy net cord etc if a chess player studys some of the top level games.

possible moves in chess: 10 x 10¹²⁰
number of atoms in the universe: 10 x 10⁷⁷

No-one's that good. Even if every computer in the world were to be put to the task, and every person in the world was building new computers, the sun would explode before the game of chess was solved.




I'm not talking about accidentally making the right moves to a winning combination. I'm not talking about casually knocking a few pieces across a board and getting lucky because your opponent didn't notice he could take your horsey.
I'm talking about high level chess players making positional moves in the middle of the game based on looking as far ahead as they can.

The evidence for this is that Grandmaster A doesn't always beat Grandmaster B.
You could attribute all such instances to statements like "Grandmaster B player played better on the day." This would not always be correct though. Luck does definatley exist in chess, I have seen it happen, I just can't explain it.

[FuglyBaz]

I'm not talking about accidentally making the right moves to a winning combination. I'm not talking about casually knocking a few pieces across a board and getting lucky because your opponent didn't notice he could take your horsey.

Im really sorry but I laughed out real loud when you typed horsey. Thats what i used to say when I was a kid at school playing the odd game