Is chess the Only 100% skill based game?

Let's say they play 1000 games and win 50% each.  (let's assume they do not always win with white).

Why did a player win any particular game?  Luck.

Why did that same player win half of the games?  Over time, like in dice, the probabilities come through, like flipping a coin.  But any particular game must be luck.  

There is luck in chess...however you get paired in a tourney, etc. the method used to give one player white and one black involves luck at some level (or it is inherently unfair).  That is the only luck involved in the game, approximately valued at 0.25 pawns in white's favor for having the first move.  Blunders vs. best play by an opponent have nothing to do with luck at all.  

Perfect play means same result each time.

Too bad Go is not very common in Europe/America. :(

Lasker thought Go was a fascinating game. Wrote books on it.

For who are talking about luck in poker there is variance simulators of poker touneys or cash games, when you can see how cruel is the element of luck in this game.

http://pokerdope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

Your "skill" in tournaments is measured by your "ROI" (return of investment). Lets give an example: In a 5+0,50 tournament, 2000 players max, 180 places payed, with a sample size of 2000,  30% roi each player. 50% of them are loosing money or break even. So we have here, 2000 players playing 2000 tournaments like bots, all of them playing at the same level and 50% of them are loosing or break even.

In cash games the variance is quite high as well, lower than tournaments or sit and go's but is there. You need samples of 500k hands or more to get an idea of your level. Poker players need to play against bad players, thats the only big deal of the game and still you will suffer very bad runs, any poker player can tell you that. Also, this recreationals players dont play at high or medium stakes very often, they only play at microstakes most of the time (nl2, nl5, nl10, nl25 the higher is the stakes, less and less bad players you see). 

Thats why i think is laughable when someone compare chess to poker. I play poker since a lot of years, i gain some money but you cannot take this game serious. You dont have any sustancial edge over the players. 

Now talking about chess, the only luck factor that i see are in tournaments, it happends at the highest levels and at the lowest. Ask that to kramnik when he lost to ivanchuck at the candidates tournament. But still the strongest player should win most of the time, its a law of nature. Blunders, time troubles and that kind of things are part of the game, i do not considered that as a matter of luck. So asking to the op, yeah, i feel that chess is the most serious and skilled board game of all times.


 

Why not all of the time?

Here's an example of luck:  

Imagine two chess computers, equally matched.  

Strategy A beats Strategy B

Strategy B beats Strategy C

Strategy C beats Strategy A

Of coures, it's probably much more complicated, like this:

Strategy D beats Strategies E, F, G and H.

Strategy E beats Strategies I, J, K and L

But Strategy J beats Strategy D (only).

So if the first computer picks Strategy D, it would win more games than if it picked Strategy J.  

Part 2: 

Much of chess is guessing how good your opponant is.

If player 2 knows player 1 better, because player 1's games are published while player 2's games are not published, then that gives an advantage to the unnknown player.  While one might not call that 'luck', it certainly isn't because the unknown player is better. 

Part 3:  Much of chess is GUESSING whether the other player will "see" where you are going.  Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't *for the same position*.   Example, if someone blunders away their queen, but less often than the other guy, no one game is a true measure of skill.  It's a matter of luck that Bob blundered when he played Bill and not Jim.  

Just think about all the times you make a move and hope he doesn't notice the key reason.  His skill of noticing does not make your move better or worse, rather, you have to guess.  You can't read his mind, so if you guess right or wrong, it's luck. 

Your post is a good example of "the worse at chess you are, the more chance is involved."  Hoping your opponent "doesn't see it" is awful chess.

*None* of chess is guessing how good your opponent is.

SouthWestRacingNews

Sorry but your post shows you know very little about chess. You are almost completely wrong.

Exactly, if you find yourself hoping that your opponent will miss something during a game then you are not playing chess properly.  

However I still believe that luck plays a role even at the highest levels of chess (including between engines) since it is impossible for any player (including an engine) to take account of every possibility in a given position and the consequences of what remains "unseen" by the players during a game is luck.

All of chess is finding the best move in every position withy any regard for who your opponent is. The same is true of all perfect information games, from tic-tac-toe to connect four to chess to go, all of which are 100% skill based games.

There's not really any skill in chess.  You just need to know the right first-turn move.

Wow.. what a stormy thread I created, stormy and very interesting indeed.

A lot of valid points made, and some games I totally agree with, at least the ones I researched and played, just as a test. Such as tic tac toe, Go, checkers. A few others like bridge, sound like a 100% skill-based game, though I don't know for sure.

I am sorry, poker is NOT a 100% skill base game, no matter what argument any1 gives. Keyword is 100%.  It might be 90% or whatever figure any1 want's to give it, but the fact that cards are shuffled, and handed out randomly includes an element of luck. It is for the same reason that scrabble is not included in this list, even though after that blind picking of tiles, all else is skill afterwards.

Somene mentioned swimming. Sorry, I wanted it limited to games/board games. or else we would include pretty much all sports.

I read a few funny (and almost silly) arguments stating that even chess has luck. about guessing your opponents move, or hoping he doesn't see it. Utter nonsense. A good player can pretty much always see his opponents (potential) moves. if the opponent does not see it, it is on him/her. That a player losses at chess, is either cos he failed to see a move, or s/he could do nothing about it. Which is why one grandmaster can beat another though they are both very good. And this is why draws can happen cos both players anticipate each others move until/such that a stalmate/draw is the only way to end it.

Also read a few posts mentioning chess aint skill, but tactics, mathematics, knowledge., etc. Those who say that obviously dont really know the difference or meaning of these words.

If any, the only element of luck which might exist in chess is only at the start of the game,w hen determining who plays white. Such as a coin toss, or similar. But that is not even during the game, so in my opinion, that don't count. And secondly, even given the "advantage" that white might be said to have as a result of making the first move (as a result of the "luck" of the coin toss,) the fact that a person playing black can easily win the game negates that argument.

While I would love to address other "silly" arguments i read here, I couldn't possibly do so.

All in all, great thread. And lets keep the game alive and thriving.

Yes, this.

StarCraft Broodwar = 100% Skill

People consider it the chess equivalent of video games

That is true.  I have been playing both for over ten years and they are both the most intellectual satisfying games I've ever played on their respective platforms.  I was just mentioning that it is considered probably the closest chess equivalent in terms of strategy games on the PC.  

I think we all agree that at least theoretically, chess is solvable. That is, all of the information to make the best move is available to us on every move. Games that rely on some randomizing factor (cards that are all face-down, dice, random move generators and so on) are not solvable.

There are quite a few games that are like chess, including go, checkers, tic-tac-toe, and so on.  Some games are more interesting than others, but there is a whole class of games that are similar to chess in that they rely 100% on skill, as the OP put it.

Of course there is luck in chess, then it's another thing that it is a very small part of the game, but here Portisch won because he was lucky:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1049655

So, do you really believe that chess is not solvable? 

If you point out that someone got "lucky" in a single game, that merely means his opponent didn't find the best moves. 

I believe chess is ultimately a draw and would be shocked to find out otherwise. Chess probably won't be solved for about 200 years (going at the rate of the current endgame tablebases). But it will be solved.