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Comment on Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.parent

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The relevant quote here is, "People don't gamble on Chess."

A luck element lets players of uneven skill feel engaged. Even better is a great handicapping system like Go has, but that's notoriously hard to design.

Chess is a great game at certain skill levels and has a lot of beauty to it, but games with enough of a skill difference aren't really interesting for either player unless the better player is teaching/mentoring.

So yeah, luck has some place in letting different people (and even gamble) together.

I know some people who actually gamble on chess. The thing is, that even with a perfect game (not saying that chess is perfect) you still have the human factors involved. The spirit, the concentration of both players today, the pressure involved when betting money or playing in front of observers. There is still a lot of margin left.

I guess there wouldn't be any incentive for weaker players to bet if they were guaranteed to lose money every game! I find that issue with chess... I'm better than my friends (who have only played a handful of times) but get smoked online or by serious players.

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