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Insightful comment about luck versus skill

Posted By: Tom Keith
Date: Friday, 13 August 2010, at 6:11 p.m.

In Response To: Insightful comment about luck versus skill (Timothy Chow)

Different people have different intuitive ideas of what constitutes luck versus skill. But, from a scientific point of view, I think it is useful to define luck in terms of the uncertainty of the outcome. That way luck can be measured.

Tic-tac-toe is a perfect illustration. When children play tic-tac-toe for the first time, and don't really know how to analyze the game, there is a considerable amount of luck involved as they try different moves to see what happens. With experience, they figure out how to analyze the game, or simply memorize all the patterns, until eventually it becomes a game of pure skill.

In backgammon, it's hard to deny that there is a considerable amount of luck, because of the dice. But in other games, such as golf (which may have just as much luck as backgammon), players tend not to as willing to accept the possibility that the outcome is largely determined by luck. See this thread from a couple weeks ago: http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=74336

I think all fun games include sizable doses of both luck and skill. A game is no fun if you know the outcome ahead of time. And it is also no fun if you can't influence the outcome.

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