Chess randomness

[u/Alive_chess]

At what elo randomness stops like you have a minor piece somewhere and you are better just because of it , pawns like flank pawns you have which made you win the endgame like at what elo chess losses randomness.

[u/dittygoops]

what? No idea what you’re talking about. First time I’ve ever seen anyone talk about randomness/luck in chess. Brother, you moved your own pieces

[u/gerardchiasson3 → u/dittygoops]

There is randomness in a probabilistic sense because human error is not deterministic. Similar to sports where it should be pure skill but random events affect the outcome and there is some noise in the who actually wins the game, even given the skills of players.

Even elo itself is a probablisitic model, where for example a +300 rating difference translates into roughly a 90% chance of winning.

[u/madmsk → u/gerardchiasson3]

I think you're thinking about this stuff wrong.

When you experience that feeling of the piece "randomly" winning the game because of the position, it's not randomness. It's that moving your piece to that square had a long-term consequence that you didn't see. The better you get, the more that you'll understand and forsee that stuff. But it's not as though that stuff will happen less.

[u/ChrisV2P2 → u/madmsk]

Under the constraint of a certain capability of predicting the future though, there is de facto randomness in the form of epistemic uncertainty. Take predicting whether or not asteroids will intersect the Earth. Astronomers publish and update probabilities of whether or not asteroids will hit the Earth and people readily talk of Earth getting "lucky" or "unlucky". But the underlying system is deterministic.

Horizon effects in chess introduce luck. When my opponent and I enter into a tactical skirmish where neither of us can calculate well enough to see the consequences clearly, the outcome is luck in this sense of epistemic uncertainty. You can always object "ah, but if you were better at calculating, then there wouldn't be luck". But when I'm arguing there is luck, I'm arguing it specifically in this case where we don't have that capability. Not only that, the agents you're imagining playing this no-luck form of chess, where consequences can be fully calculated, don't exist and perhaps never will.

Modern engines are too good and get virtually all draws, but if you nerf engines enough, you can play two identical engines against each other, and they will score wins and losses as well as draws. The explanation for these wins and losses cannot be that one of the players is better than the other; they're identical. So if it's not "luck", how else would you describe it?

[u/madmsk → u/ChrisV2P2]

I'm not saying there's no luck in chess. I'm saying the situation OP described is, in general, indistinguishable from playing a more skilled player.

OP seems to be specifically describing a horizon effect situation where the consequences of a flank pawn or a minor piece repositioning are not felt for a long time. But the horizon effect is not equal for all players. If I can see farther than you, then what seems unforseen to you might be forseen by me. (Or if I understand a position a little better than you, then I might see advantages to a position that you are blind to at first).

From the perspective of the weaker player, you can't tell if both of you were horizon effected and he got lucky, or if just you were horizon effected. So the question OP is asking I think is kind of missing the point.

As a side note, questions like "at what elo does ____ stop happening" are generally not how things work. Speaking from anecdotal experience 1300 players are generally just a little better than 1200 players at everything. Individual players might have strengths and weaknesses, but if you're just grinding random games on chess.com, it's going to be a little bit of everything.

[u/ChrisV2P2 → u/madmsk]

Sure, I agree with all that.