[AaronBrown]

If you take your position to the extreme, nothing is luck except maybe quantuum physics. Claude Shannon (the father of information theory) built a mechanical hand that could flip a coin, heads or tails on command, consistently. He and Ed Thorp (the father of blackjack card counting) built a computer that could predict roulette results from observing the spin before betting was closed. So the laws of physics apply to coins and roulette wheels and dice. But without a computer and some precision measurements, they're random for practical purposes.

The extreme version of your friend's argument is that everything is luck. When I play my son in chess, I win sometimes and he wins sometimes. Obviously there's some luck that determines which one of us is sharper at each game.

Unless you are an extremist, Beruit is clearly a middle ground between roulette and chess. Skill matters quite a bit, but even for the best players there is a large element of luck.