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BGonline.org Forums
Insightful comment about luck versus skill
Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Friday, 13 August 2010, at 3:37 p.m.
A friend of mine, who's an expert on games and whom I've mentioned occasionally before on this forum, recently made a comment to me about luck versus skill that I thought was quite insightful. The comment is that a "game of pure skill" is a rather strange concept when you think about it carefully.
Ask yourself, in a game of pure skill—if such a thing exists—does the more skillful player always win? My friend says that if you try to come up with examples then you typically come up with "measurements" rather than "games." For example, we could play the "game" of "Who's younger?" If I'm 50 and you're 60, then I win because I'm younger. And guess what? If we play this game over and over again, I will always win. So is this a "game of pure skill"? There's certainly no luck involved.
If you think about this more then you will probably conclude that for us to consider some task as involving "skill," then there must be some uncertainty involved. Now, if there's some "uncertainty" then does that mean that there's necessarily some "luck"? If so then any game of skill must involve some luck as well, and hence the term "game of pure skill"—again, if it means anything at all—doesn't mean a game where there is no luck involved. Luck and skill aren't opposed to each other but overlap.
If on the other hand you insist that luck and skill are disjoint, then it seems you'll need to distinguish between "luck" and "uncertainty."
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