Luck is nothing more than the coincidence of circumstances and time.

Circumstances are about you, your physical condition, education, age, the effects of the environment upon you. the place you are occupying in the universe, etc, etc.
Time is about, well time obviously.

Bad lucky is when there is no coincidence. You are going for a job interview and it is raining, there are no taxis, the train station is 10 blocks from the office you are going to. You get there late and miss out on the job. If your education had been different you might left home an hour earlier and got it.

Good luck is when you see the $20 bill on the ground when there are 30 other people that might have seen it but were to busy looking at a busker playing music you hate.

It all boils down into Murphy's Law in the end.

What is to be made of the prevailing scientific opinion that life itself is an accident, emerging from nothing more than matter, energy and chance? All we have of the 99.9% of species that ever existed are petrified fossils. It seems that luck is never on our side and success comes, not because of good luck but, in reality, despite bad luck.

There are many lost brilliant ideas and visions, because of various limiting factors in life/society/existence, even including seemingly random factor such as "luck/fortunate". — niki wonoto

If they're lost how do you know about them.

According to me LUCK is an acronym for Living Under Correct Knowledge. Once you start investing in your self, you invariable start getting lucky ;)

I’ve thought about this as well. There’s always the possibility that someone has the potential to be great is some respect, but simply doesn’t have the opportunity to demonstrate their potential. This can be due to all kinds of factors outside of their control; time and place of birth, economic status, race, etc.. However, I’m not sure what there is to say about this fact philosophically. I think people use this as an excuse for their failures, and sometimes it may not be an excuse. I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure what someone’s potential is, except by judging their achievements. But predicting how successful someone will turn out to be seems rather difficult.