In Chess, Variability in Play Is Not Dumb Luck
We often confuse the ups and downs of human performance in games with luck.
By
CHRISTOPHER CHABRIS
March 13, 2015 4:04 p.m. ET
Wall Street Journal
In a tense game in last year’s world chess-championship match, Magnus Carlsen made a huge mistake—an error so obvious to grandmasters that as soon as his hand left the piece, he saw it himself and paused nervously before writing down his move. Incredibly, his opponent, Viswanathan Anand, failed to make the winning reply, allowing Mr. Carlsen to escape. It was a rare “double blunder” among the chess elite—but was luck involved?
Games are often categorized as being ruled primarily by skill or by chance. In some children’s favorites, like War or Chutes and Ladders, every move is dictated by the roll of dice or the shuffle of cards, so luck alone determines who wins. In poker, Monopoly and most modern tabletop and computer games, there are both mechanisms for generating random events and opportunities to make meaningful choices, and the outcome depends on both skill and chance.
As a rule, the greater the number of decisions a player must make, the larger the role of skill in a game. But managing randomness demands certain skills too, such as understanding simple probabilities and mastering one’s emotional reaction to bad rolls or draws.
At the other end of the spectrum are games like chess or Go with no randomness, in which “pure skill” is being tested. Suppose Mr. Carlsen were able to see every possibility 100 moves into the future of each game and to evaluate them all objectively. He wouldn’t have blundered against Mr. Anand; indeed, he would easily defeat every single opponent.
But Mr. Carlsen is not that kind of computer: His human brain generates performances that naturally vary around an average level that reflects his true, underlying chess skill.
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