That’s an interesting one because the result is (?) in your control. Not sure I’d call that luck, but maybe. I was trying for examples where whatever happens results from someone else’s actions.
That’s the basic conundrum of chess, it is a total information game, there is no actual variance in the game itself because you can see all of the information about the position all the time. This is wildly different from a board game with dice or a card game where you can’t see your opponents cards, etc. But in practice there is variance, we’ve all experienced it. I’ve been in positions where I see the move and then in the same or a very similar position later miss the move. I would argue that variance in outcomes is more relevant measure of luck than whether or not something is in your “control”.
But isn’t variance a matter of who is doing the assessing? If I’m deciding between opening A or B and eventually decide A, there’s no variance from my perspective. But if you are trying to guess what I’m going to do, then there is.
IDK. Seems hard to define luck!
Bear in mind that in some games it is way easier to play accurately than in others. In a super tactical game, where everything is attacking everything and any minor misstep could lead to disaster, getting 90% accuracy is next to impossible. In a game where all the minor pieces are off the board by move 10 followed by a 60 move endgame, 90% still isn’t easy but it is far more achievable.
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i don’t know if i buy the total information argument anymore. yes it applies in the strictest theoretical sense, but in fact humans or any physical computer is working with a limited amount of information at any given time, and the game tree is much larger than what their memory can hold. therefore it is a partial information game, and throwing your opponent into unprepared territory is a valid strategy.
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This is headed into physics/philosophy territory. I like it.
I’ve also noticed that the games I’ve played with King’s Indian Attack/Defense have a considerably lower average than my normal games.
Supposedly, Stockfish is not as good at analyzing closed games as it is open games. So, that might be a reason.
As for chess being luck, it definitely can be at least online. I’ve had my finger slip off the screen a few times in my games and it has led to less than desirable positions. In one instance, the blunder was so bad that I immediately resigned despite being ahead most of the game.
There is luck in chess between players of similar strength. Whatever falls beyond the calculation horizon of both players is random. I have had plenty of super tactical positions where we embark on some long tactical sequence and at the end of it there is some resource for me or my opponent that there was no way either of us was going to see. Improving at calculation simply pushes this horizon further back. Even for engines, what lurks in the portion of the game tree they are unable to see is random and therefore contains luck.
The rating thing is a) pretty random, it seems like, and b) anchored off your rating. Like your actual rating is the primary input into its “rating guess” formula. If you anonymize the PGN and re-import and analyze it, it will give you a much higher guess because it doesn’t know your actual Elo.
A lot of what chess.com does is best understood as trying to give little ego boosts to low rated players to get them to stick around and hopefully buy a membership. The “brilliant move” designation and this “Elo guess” thing are both efforts to get players to want to run more game reviews. Neither has any real meaning outside of this goal.
Sample size here is well below the point where anything meaningful can be said.
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I didn’t follow the championship but this seems like a decent write up
Bonus poker content:
when Game Four began, at 3 p.m. in Astana, it was 2 a.m. in Los Angeles. Carlsen, his hair pulled into a topknot, sat at a table at the Hustler Casino, playing poker. Alexandra Botez, a fellow chess player—who, along with her sister, Andrea, has more than a million and a half followers on YouTube and TikTok—was also at the table. They were surrounded by TikTok streamers and YouTube stars.
The King’s Indian Defense seems super useful at beginner level chess.
It’s one of those openings that you pretty much never see from players <700. So, people with those ratings don’t really know how to deal with it. Normally, my opponents make their moves in less than 10 seconds. Since I’ve been playing KID, people have been taking way more time before making their decisions. It also avoids Scholar’s Mate and other gimmicky mates that are prevalent among beginners.
At the same time, I’m quite new with it. So, I’m making mistakes too. Put myself in mate in 1 in a game and my opponent didn’t notice it. That’s what I get for moving too fast.
Last I game I played with it, I faced an opponent who opened with the London System. Super rare to see that <700 too. We were a bit flummoxed during play and both of us ran down to less than a minute until time pressure forced him to blunder away both of his rooks back-to-back during the endgame before resigning.
It’s fun to play KID against d4 and c4 openings. You can play a modified version of it against e4 called the Pirc Defense. The only noticeable difference I see is that you respond to e4 with d6 before setting up the KID.
Since opponents will pretty much never play fundamentally sound openings against it at my level, a lot of the theory is not worth learning yet because it will never come into play. Again, I literally just played against the London for the first time in my life at 700.
I suspect that as my rating increases, I’ll have to retire it. But it’s fun for now.
The KID gets very tricky for black who can easily get a very cramped position, and it’s common for even club strength players to know white’s main lines quite deep.
If you want to continue with it I recommend Perelshteyn’s chess dot com video series on the Na6 line that most white players don’t know too well, if at all.
The difference between the KID and the Pirc is that white hasn’t played c4, which is a big difference. The two openings are related but not at all the same but in both cases black always has to bear in mind the positions that might arise if white exchanges DSBs with a Be3, Qd2, Bh6 type of thing.
Against the trendy London I like the setup with c6 and Qb6 exploiting the premature bishop move.
If b3 then black plays d6 and Nh5 getting rid of the bishop (with g6 first if necessary), and g6, a fianchetto and d5, c5. White has nothing really.
I think it’s fine that you’re playing a sound opening that you enjoy playing! Although I wouldn’t say you need to learn/memorize opening lines, it wouldn’t hurt for you to either play/read though some beginner’s instruction on the KID and/or play over some famous games with Fischer/Kasparov/etc., so you can get a feel for how the pawn structures lead to certain types of attacks and defense.
I messed around with KID a bit and then gave it up. I think it isn’t great for beginners or intermediate players because you are not attacking the center and very often get cramped.
i’ve played KID in tournaments/chess team when i was a young beginner. I found that it’s pretty good in competitive games, it’s more likely a moderately higher rated opponent would be confused by a closed position, but less so in club games, because you end up playing the same opponent more often, and eventually playing the same thing against a stronger player puts you at a disadvantage
I think this is true for a rank beginner just becoming familar with the game.
But if you’re beyond that, you can experiment a bit.
For me it’s a matter of personal preference. I kind of like closed games and I suspect most casual players hate them because small positional moves in an enclosed area are boring and lack the excitement that meme-attacks and wayward queens provide. Hopefully, they tilt and blunder a piece that can give me an edge.
I was thinking of beginner being like 1200-1300 chess dot com. But of course if it works go for it. Just speaking to my experience and the problems I had with it.
Pirc > KID, imo
I actually think both are fine for beginners. The idea is that you’re just making some solid moves until your opponent blunders, which happens often enough.
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I suspect that chess.com has changed what it defines as a blunder. I saw some moves my opponent made that were clearly atrocious and they were classified as mistakes rather than blunders.
It also seems to have made great moves a bit easier to get too.
What’s interesting is when I enter the moves into explorer and analyze them separate from the post-game review, it assessed more moves as blunders and fewer moves as great or brilliant. The overall accuracy is more or less the same but the classification of moves is different.
Leads me to believe that they’re being nicer to players post game to not demoralize them for sucking.
I suspect that what is a “blunder” would depend on the rating of the player, no? Failing to see a forced line with a knight-king-queen fork in 3-5 moves (I’m sure there are better examples) might be a blunder for an 2000 rated player but a mistake/inaccuracy for a 1000 rated player. As an extreme example - if blunders were defined the same as they were in commentary for the world championship, pretty much every move most players make in the mid-game onwards would probably qualify.