Winter Olympics as a game of chance

You're lucky if the other guy screws up a move? originally posted by Jim Clemmens about luck in chess Actually that is a little ambiguous IMHO for several reasons.....let me just elaborate a little on the main reason though:......What exactly does "scew up" a move mean anyway?......Most Grandmaster chess palyers believe that if neither player makes any mistakes on any moves (i.e. niether player screws up at least one move on some level) then the game will always end in a draw BOTTOM LINE.....No one can win a game of chess unless at least one of the players "screws up" at least one move.....Emanual Lasker (famous Chess Champion) was quoted once as saying something to the effect that the one who wins in chess is just the one who screws up the least..........If two players are of a sufficiently high skill level (and aren't playing 5 minute blitz chess....but regular tounament rules chess in which they each have something like 2 hours or so to make the first 40 moves), it is almost impossible to believe that either player would ever "screw up" a move in any "obvious" way....unless (as I stated before) they accidently put a piece on the wrong square (i.e. a square different from the one they intended to put it on) without thinking and removed thier hand from the piece before they realized thier mistake....something that I have done before....but also is very unlikely to occur. Newmastersswimmer p.s. Just in case anyone may think this is interesting (and probably you don't ...so then simply skip my extra comments below): The reason that my ascertion that at least one player has to screw up at least one move before anyone can win a game of chess cannot be rigorously mathematically proven as of yet has mainly to do with the enormous number of different possible legal chess configurations that could potentially arise in a game of chess (so too many to count and catalogue).....so many in fact that no supercomputer in existence today could ever count them all in any reasonable amount of time.....it has been estimated that the total number of different chess configurations is on the order of 10 raised to the 40th power.....the total number of atoms in the entire universe (which contains an estimated 50 billion or so galaxies ....most of which contain millions of solar systems) is believed by most cosmologists to be somewhere on the order of 10 to the 50th power......another way of trying to understand how large 10 to the 40th power is as a number is based on how long it takes to count to a number that big....For example: If a computer could theoretically count and catalogue at a rate of a trillion different chess configurations per second (on average), then it would still take well over 20 billion years to count them all based on the estimate of 10 to the 40th power I gave....this is a span of time that most cosmologists believe to be longer than than the entire lifespan of the universe (from the big bang up untill today!!)

You're lucky if the other guy screws up a move? originally posted by Jim Clemmens about luck in chess Actually that is a little ambiguous IMHO for several reasons.....let me just elaborate a little on the main reason though:......What exactly does "scew up" a move mean anyway?......Most Grandmaster chess palyers believe that if neither player makes any mistakes on any moves (i.e. niether player screws up at least one move on some level) then the game will always end in a draw BOTTOM LINE.....No one can win a game of chess unless at least one of the players "screws up" at least one move.....Emanual Lasker (famous Chess Champion) was quoted once as saying something to the effect that the one who wins in chess is just the one who screws up the least..........If two players are of a sufficiently high skill level (and aren't playing 5 minute blitz chess....but regular tounament rules chess in which they each have something like 2 hours or so to make the first 40 moves), it is almost impossible to believe that either player would ever "screw up" a move in any "obvious" way....unless (as I stated before) they accidently put a piece on the wrong square (i.e. a square different from the one they intended to put it on) without thinking and removed thier hand from the piece before they realized thier mistake....something that I have done before....but also is very unlikely to occur. Newmastersswimmer p.s. Just in case anyone may think this is interesting (and probably you don't ...so then simply skip my extra comments below): The reason that my ascertion that at least one player has to screw up at least one move before anyone can win a game of chess cannot be rigorously mathematically proven as of yet has mainly to do with the enormous number of different possible legal chess configurations that could potentially arise in a game of chess (so too many to count and catalogue).....so many in fact that no supercomputer in existence today could ever count them all in any reasonable amount of time.....it has been estimated that the total number of different chess configurations is on the order of 10 raised to the 40th power.....the total number of atoms in the entire universe (which contains an estimated 50 billion or so galaxies ....most of which contain millions of solar systems) is believed by most cosmologists to be somewhere on the order of 10 to the 50th power......another way of trying to understand how large 10 to the 40th power is as a number is based on how long it takes to count to a number that big....For example: If a computer could theoretically count and catalogue at a rate of a trillion different chess configurations per second (on average), then it would still take well over 20 billion years to count them all based on the estimate of 10 to the 40th power I gave....this is a span of time that most cosmologists believe to be longer than than the entire lifespan of the universe (from the big bang up untill today!!)