Game of chance

A game of chance is a game whose outcome depends essentially on a random draw, rather than on the skill, memory or strategy of the person playing. The result is fixed by an unpredictable mechanism — a coin, a die, a wheel, numbers — over which skill has no lasting hold.

The useful intuition is that of a boundary. On one side, games where playing better truly changes the outcome: an experienced chess player almost always beats a beginner. On the other, games where effort and experience do not shift the probabilities: no technique makes "heads" more frequent than it is. Many real games sit between the two, mixing a share of chance with a share of decision.

What mathematically characterises a game of chance is that the probability of each result is fixed by the device and stays stable from one session to the next. In a coin toss, the probability of getting heads is 1/2 on every toss; when rolling a fair die, each face is worth 1/6. These values do not improve with practice, precisely because the player does not act on the mechanism.

A frequent confusion is the belief that you can "learn to win" at a pure game of chance by spotting patterns. But successive draws are independent: what has already come up does not influence what will come up. The recipes that promise to beat chance rest on this illusion and have no basis.

Most of the tools offered on this site belong to this family: they serve to draw lots impartially, to settle a tie, decide or have fun. Presenting them clearly as games of chance is part of an educational approach to chance, which helps tell apart what belongs to random drawing from what belongs to skill.