Incidentally, Richard Garfield, designer of Magic, once wrote on the topic of luck in games. He said that there is, in fact, luck in chess, because we cannot predict the outcome with certainty. He went on to explain that if he sat down to play chess against Kasparov or some other world-class chess champion, he'd expect to lose, but there's still a possibility (however small) that he could happen to stumble upon a superior line of play, perhaps without even realizing it, and end up winning.
Perhaps it would be useful to make a distinction between the game of chess, which is mostly skill, and the game of betting on chess, which is mostly luck with fairly well-known probabilities. It looks to me as though the original article is conflating the two very badly, and that this is the cause of much confusion.
Gil Kalai, a well known mathematician, has this to say on the topic of chess and luck:
http://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/chess-can-be-a-game-of-luck/
I didn't follow his argument at all, but it seems like something other LW posters may understand, so I decided to post it here. Do comment on his arguments if you agree or disagree with him.