If it’s in before midnight, it’s on time…

Without a doubt, Chess and Go are two of the world’s most popular, best-respected board games. Both are rather unusual in that they feature no element of chance. Conversely, games that are entirely chance get little respect from serious gamers. (Candy Land? Snakes and Ladders?) In a casino, most board-gamers would rather play a game involving skill (Blackjack or Poker) over one with none (Craps or the slots), even against the same inexorable house odds in both games. From these extremes, you might guess that less chance implies a better game. But there are many reasons why some element of chance can improve almost any game:

• Winning the game is a payoff for many people. In a game with no chance, a less-skilled player is likely to lose a lot of the time and may get discouraged. If there is some element of chance, skilled players will still be able to enjoy the fruits of their ability (by winning disproportionately often), while other players still get to taste victory sometimes.

• An element of chance keeps the game moving. If a game is very deterministic, some players will try to think as far moves ahead as possible, looking for the perfect play. I hate this. If there are significant unknown factors in the next few turns, players have to use intuition more. This tends to be faster.

• Chance introduces anticipation, which adds excitement. Think Settlers of Catan: “Please not a seven, please not a seven…” Anticipation is also a payoff that keeps people coming back to any gambling game.

• An element of chance adds more possibilities. Scrabble could be made more “fair” if everyone were guaranteed to alternate consonant and vowel draws, but that would make all games more similar and skew the game in favor of long, sweeping words instead of close, creative plays. The art of every card game is to be able to play both good hands and bad ones.

• Playing probabilities can be a great opportunity for skill. For instance, in Bridge, the declarer often can gain an extra trick by guessing which opponent has the queen of trump. Without extra information, this is a 50/50 guess, but by carefully considering the opponents’ bidding, a skilled player can guess more accurately where the unknown card lies. Likewise, in Poker, a player may know that his chance to draw, say, the last card to a four-card flush is small; but the size of the pot and bet required might make the bet a profitable one anyway.

Note that chance does not necessarily have to equal luck. For example, in Puerto Rico, a random collection of plantation tiles is revealed for everyone. Some players may be better able to capitalize on the plantations than others; but this contrasts with, say, Backgammon, where a player who rolls high doubles over and over will just trounce an opponent who keeps rolling 1’s and 3’s.

The moral of the story is that except for a few sublime exceptions, an element of chance is an important part of making games fun. Only a handful of the most outstanding in history have thrived without it.