I have a question for you - are you saying it’s luck based because it’s not humanly possible to calculate what to do in a hit select trade, or are you just calling it luck based?

I think you have to realize, if you are talking about the second one, that really the only way you can combo someone in a trade is if you don’t hit them at the same time they hit you, (or someone just clicks a shit ton more than the other person - meaning like 11 vs 17 jitter, 8 vs 16 butterfly, etc). And what you also have to realize is generally the person who got the second hit will win, again with the same exception.

As to why the second hit will pretty much always win: if you got the first hit, then to combo them or at least not get comboed, you have to hit them right before you leave their reach. If they fuck up your spacing even a tiny bit, i.e they let go of w while you do that, and you miss the chance to hit them, they will win the trade. And it just so happens that to combo someone with a hit select hit, that’s exactly what you have to do (let go of w while still somewhat close). There is another single exception, that is if you’re clicking similar cps and your hit is only like 1 tick apart which they’d still have a chance to hit you.