Is Luck a factor in chess ?

Yes, 2 examples. 1)One player gets disconnected by a poor connection. 2)One player hits the leave button by mistake or one player accepts a draw by mistake. All of these have happened to me. Actually chess.com should do something about these issues. You should never be able to leave the game unless you resign or your time expires. That is the case in other chess clubs. And you should be asked to confirm before you accept a draw

Some mistakes are done because of poor knowledge and skill. The chance plays almost no role in this kind of mistakes. Such mistakes can be predicted if you know the player very well.

But other mistakes are random - for example you know a tactical pattern, you've solved it many times as a puzzle but nevertheless you fail to see it in this specific position during the game. There is no way to predict when such mistake will be made by you or your opponent. Hence we can talk about luck.

Same about mistakes in calculation - everybody makes them from patzers to super GMs. I'd say that chance plays its role when you calculate at the limit of your abilities. For example I am a B class player and calculating 2 move sequence correctly should not be a problem for me. But let's take 5 move sequence - given limited time in OTB game I can do it right or I can miscalculate - there is no way to know in advance.

However badly you played, you still outplayed your opponent.  Therefore, that wasn't luck.

You outplayed him because he blundered, blunders are quite random, when random factors play in your favor that's luck.

Short answer, Yes. But only bad luck, if someone is expecially tired or stressed etc or online a misclicked or short dropped piece.

So if you make a blunder - you were unlucky?  No, you made a mistake, nothing to do with luck.  It may feel lucky when your opponent makes a blunder, but it isn't.  The definition of luck is success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.  The blunder did not happen by chance - it happened through the voluntary and chosen action of your opponent.

"Voluntary and chosen action" doesn't exclude chance, you can't predict this action and its results just like you can't predict dice roll or coin flip.

All you can say is somezthing like this: average probability of GM making a blunder is 0.01% while for patzer it is 20%.

Thanks for your opinions, certainly there are very interesting ones in my point of view.

Btw I meant Luck purely realted to the board game, not related to other factors like the players mood or blunders.

I agree with those who said Yes, there is always also a part of luck sometimes, e.g as Mazkor wrote "in a complicated position you have a piece on a certain square. You put it there ten moves ago for a completely different reason even though a different move was better. Now it saves the game! How lucky!"

I also agree with CensoredReality who wrote: "I think the amount of luck decreases as players get better. But even at the highest levels there is a small amount of luck."

Sure, Luck does not define a win or a loss in every game one plays, but for sure Luck can play a role since no one has 100% control on how a game does evolute from the beginning until the end.

Also interesting the guesses of post #8 and  #21.

So my guess is yes, although Luck plays a very small role in chess, it is a factor which happens also in chess. That is also why, among others, one have to playe a sequence of games against a concrete opponent to determine who is better.

On the other hand, even taking the game where luck is the most important factor like e.g.a a card game, even there is also a logical/mental factor involved.

So I think No, you can not say Chess is 100% free of Luck.

I think there is no luck in chess.  You can get "lucky" if your opponent blunders and you were outplayed.

BUT none of us can ever beat a good chess engine in our whole life, even if we played millions of games!  So from that point of view there is no luck involved.  Because there is no chance involved.  In order for luck to occur there must be an element of randomness such as dices, random cards, etc.
I can beat a professional Backgammon player in a match, and I have done so.  But I am no where near that in chess! 

Chess is a game of perfect information and no chance involved.  So for me there is no luck in it in the technical sense... 

You are lucky in chess if your opponent overlooks your blunder or if he makes too many mistakes which you did not expect.

There are positions that are simply beyond players' calculating skill. If both players decide to go for such a position, and one of them wins, this is luck.

We will not beat a good chess engine in our whole life because probability of him making a noticable mistake is extremely low. But in reality we mostly play against humans whos rating is within 400 points distance from ours and there is always a chance of win or loss. Randomness is inherent to our brain decision making especially when time is limited.

The fact that chess is a game of perfect information does not mean that chance is not involved. You do have perfect information about current position on board but you don't have perfect information about consequences of the move you are going to make.

Working definition of "skill" - to play less horribly than one's opponent! 

Yes I agree completely.  Chance has nothing to do.  It is lack of skill or calculation to make a better decision.  There is no probability involved or luck in chess per se, it is just pure calculation and understanding.  And all moves are made voluntarily as mentioned.  Therefore it is not luck, just lack of information and skill

If nobody including yourself can predict the result of your "calculation and understanding" then there is probability involved.

By the way what about time spent thinking? Does it influence the result? Do always spend same amout of time per move?

In my opinion when you play someone equal or higher than your level you always need a bit of luck to win. Like in football you always need a bit of luck to score. But the better you become the more the luck factor decreases.

This thread topic is about "luck" so I guess it's no surprise that we use this term repeatedly within this thread.

As a side note - what I think about role of luck in chess relates rather to philosophical view of chess and has no real influence on how I play and train. But I do realise that my hard training simply shifts the probability away from bad moves in favor of good ones.

"It was board three that gave the tournament [2000 World Open] its storybook ending. Ivanov, also at 6.5, was paired down with the black pieces against GM Julian Hodgson, at 6. If Ivanov won, he would win the tournament outright; and if he drew, he would tie for first. For Hodgson, only a win would make the difference. The game played for a win came not because the players wanted it, but because the tournament ended in a quirk that allowed it. This was how chess players tended to talk about luck in chess, I had found. There was no luck over the board, but there was luck to the pairings; there was luck in one's health. In a game so far removed from chance, designed in fact to be without it, there was simply a readjustment of the threshold of what constituted it, so it was perhaps not a surprise that chess players tended to be odd and paranoid."

J. C. Hallman, The Chess Artist. Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game. New York: St Martin's Press, 2003. Pg 315