[michael_dorfman]

Third, a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance or luck. Ideally, the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible.

I'd disagree that this is the ideal. Personally, I enjoy games that mix luck and skill. Take Cribbage, for example-- the weaker player will still win about 45% of the time, by virtue of having been dealt better cards-- which is why tournaments consist of a number of games, to even out the luck.

I think it's great if weaker players can defeat stronger players, on occasion. It helps keep the game interesting for everybody.

Put another way: when I play chess with my children, I have to handicap myself-- otherwise, they'd lose every time, and quickly lose interest. When I play cribbage with them, they still win often enough to keep things interesting.

[derefr]

That just means that the "real game" of Cribbage lasts for one tournament, not one session. If you only played chess openings, rather than entire games, they might win some of the time as well. Almost all games that adults play competitively are made to decisively rank their players' powers of strategy over their proper play-length. Games for children introduce progressively higher levels of chance, the younger and therefore less-equipped the child is to deal with real strategy. The maximum of this slope comes in early-childhood "games" such as Chutes and Ladders—not really a game at all, as there are no strategic choices made at any point.

From this, you can take the idea that any game can be adapted for players of unequal strategic strength simply by adding chance components to it, or replacing some choice points with chance. What if, in Chess for example, you had to roll a die at the beginning of your turn to find out the maximum number of squares any of your pieces could move that turn? Or if, upon a bad roll, your opponent got to decide which of your pieces you must move?