Luck and skill often decides the success in a game. However, these two are frequently confused, and the audience is uncertain about which one is which. The debate between luck and skill is among the gaming circles for decades now. Some credence that every element of a gaming is governed by luck and others believe that success can only be achieved until a player utilises his/her harnessed skills. So what governs the gaming: luck or skill?
Luck, n- Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions– from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Everyone in life has attributed something to luck. The word “luck” is thrown around life with a great regularity. This word is tossed in the gaming more often than any other human activities, where the player’s win depends on the luck. After all, cards in a game and spin in roulette can’t be controlled.
Faith and Superstition
Gaming superstitions indicate the evolution of the gaming culture just like superstitions, faith, and tradition are designed to bring us together. This concept has an played important role in various cultures throughout the history. For example, in Thai cultures, elephants are seen as a blessing and China considers crickets lucky. Some people consider luck as a simple matter of chance, while others attribute it with faith or superstition. People around the world pay a massive amount of money just to buy numbers, home addresses, licences plates and many other things containing lucky numbers.
The Good Luck Charms
There is no denying in saying that gamers are the most superstition persons around the world. Furthermore, this superstition is the reason behind the creation of the argument of luck vs. skill. There are various superstitions, lucky tokens, ritual perpetrations in gaming circles such as crossing fingers to attract good luck, blowing the dice before rolling, carrying a good luck charm, wearing luck clothing item, sprinkling lucky water onto the money, carrying a lucky rabbit’s foot, ignoring unlucky 13 number, salt spilling, and many more.
The Psychology behind Luck
The concept of luck has caused tribulation for the psychologists and philosophers. Jean-Paul Satre a French philosopher & literary critic and Sigmund, an Austrian neurologist both concluded that belief in luck has more to do than a pure chance. This means that people use luck as an escape from reality, blaming failure on luck rather than taking its responsibility. This theory is finding its place in the real life also. Humans naturally embrace the stories and move away from real statistics. This occurs due to the left hemisphere of the brain, where an area called “interpreter” constantly tries to make sense of what is happening around it. It integrates everything a human sees and interprets that into a cause-and-effect with human beliefs. This area doesn’t know about luck, so it wanders off towards likely explanations misleading livings beings from logic, losing track of other potential explanations or possibilities.
Skill, n -The ability to do something well; expertise –from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game
A player can’t control the cards dealt or the number of the dice thrown. Such incidents prove that “Gaming is a game of chance”. However, the dice can be tossed in an advantageous way and cards can be played differently via the working knowledge of the game. The answer to this query can be found by asking; can anyone intentionally lose a game? The answer is yes, of course yes, by making decisions that a person knows are inferior. If a game is entirely based on luck or chance, how it can be changed by decent or corrupt decisions, as the players have no control over the outcome. By reading the opponents and altering the behaviour deliberately and deploying moves based on the detailed knowledge of the game, players are much more likely to taste the success. The point to note here is that the performance is predictable. In a game of luck, there would no relation between the winning of the player accords different periods.
So what will it be?
Luck is a psychological phenomenon with a huge amount of influence on both mental & physical health with a certain level of manipulation. With the right moves and knowledge of the game, any player can make their own luck, not only in gaming but in their real life as well. The answer is simple enough: if luck dominates skill then the game is a game of chance, and if skill dominates luck then the game is a game of skill. Legendary “games of chance” games like roulette can also be manipulated. An unskilled player wouldn’t know the thorough knowledge of the game and may go home with empty pockets. Taking discipline as an ally, performance can be improved by creating habits that aid in making genuine and original way in decision-making situations. The notion is not to have equal parts of luck and skills, but to balance both the characters based on the situation and responding to the warranting needs
Gaming: The Story of Fortuity and Adeptness
