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Comment by ktrgardiner | Hacker News Reader

Short answer: a fair amount. Anecdotal story: The one time i played, having never even heard of the game before, I learned as I went along and ended up winning. I'd say my final few plays were the only ones based more upon strategy and less upon "Is this a fair play? Yes? Well then here's my play." So a good deal of luck is involved because a novice can't beat pros in a game based entirely upon skill.

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How much of it is luck depends heavily on where you place the plateau of what "everybody knows".

For example, it is a skill to use the heuristic that one should not place the robber near one's own towns, or that one should try and build additional towns and roads. If that is considered something that not everybody knows, the skill factor likely is over 50%.

You came to your conclusion based off a sample size of 1 from an anecdotal story...

apart from chess, I don't know of other games based entirely upon skill :)

Chess/Go/Checkers are one category of game where luck plays no part, but not the only one. The thing they all have in common are 2 players and perfect information.

Then there are games like Stratego, which have no 'luck' but require you to make decisions based on imperfect information.

And games like Diplomacy, with no random element but a social dynamic. I'd assert that this game has no 'luck', but someone else up thread defines luck a bit differently and says that it does. :)

It has uncertainty, which comes out the same as luck to most players.

tic-tac-toe and go also require as much luck as chess.

Go =)

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