Are we limited to the heights we achieve by our I.Q.?  I guess it goes with my last post: "Can anyone achieve a master rating?"

One's rating does not depend on his/her IQ.

Given the right teacher and environment, I would think anyone can achieve a master rating. Granted, I think a high IQ still helps.

IQ probably equals more natural ability and the learning curve is different.  But if you work your ass off... everyone and their uncle could be a chess master.  Now its a matter of work ethic as well...

Hopefully Bill Wall won't mind if I link to a piece he wrote on the subject:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/iq.htm

That would be a good science fair project...

That's completely absurd. I have an IQ of 138, and I stink at chess.

The key to being good ad chess is:

Attention and concentration
Study, learning theory
Natural ability, (like a master painter/artist would have)

It seems to me that chess is a very special kind of ability, and I see no reason why it should correlate with IQ very closely.  It is sort of like poker and IQ.  High IQ helps some in most activities, but it doesn't guarantee success.  I like the idea of making this a science fair project.

I think a more appropriate equation would be

hard work+x= rating where x can be creativity, tactical ability, focus, or a blend of the three. And hard work>x. Hehe.

iq does not equal rating but i would bet a million dollars than a person with an iq of 60 could never become a grandmaster short of a surgery designed to change the brain of the individual.  If this can be agreed upon, then IQ may set limits of the total amount of ability that a person can achieve.  (this is under the assumption that rating=ability)

Well, seeing as an IQ of 70 or less is enough to be considered mentally challenged, I'd say someone below about 80 or so is highly unlikely to become a chess master. Aside from that, a lower IQ shouldn't prevent anyone from becoming a chess master, but I'd argue that those with lower IQs need to work harder to achieve the same results, all else being equal.

Doesn't IQ just correlate with pattern recognition?  If this is true then I would think that it would be highly related.  I'd like to know what Fischer or Anand or Kramnik's IQ is.  I think anyone with an IQ over 200 would be extreemly good at chess if they learned it and studied it moderately when they were young.

I read this this in that article:

In 1988, British Grandmaster Jon Levitt came up with the Levitt equation. His equation says that a player with an IQ of Y, after many years of tournament play and study, would tend to have a chess Elo rating of about 10Y + 1000. So if Fischer's IQ was 180, then his Elo rating would be 10x180 + 1000 or 2800. Fischer's Elo rating was 2785. His maximum USCF rating was 2825.

This is interesting...  so any person with an average IQ of say 120-130  could have a high probability of at least achieving a rating of about 2200-2300 with those requirements!

 camdawg18, many many thanks for the Levitt Equation! I learnt something new today, and very reassuring for people like me! Thanks!

That's such BS. He thought that "equation" up in his head, without any science or matchmatics to prove it. It's rubbish. High IQ does not mean high chess rating, by any means. There a many people with an average IQ of 100 that can achieve chess grandmaster if they studied and worked at it hard enough.

Not anyone can achieve master rating and we all have our limits, but there is no direct relationship with IQ. Even if there were, it would have to assume high dedication over a long period of time (which should be factored in) so IQ wouldn't magically equate rating anyway. Obviously even a genius isn't going to have a high rating if he only plays a handful of times a year. Nor is a brilliant student going to pass a detailed History test without ever reading anything about the subject. Additionally, while chess, being a game wholy of the mind, benefits from certain attributes, the segments used may be a small part of IQ tests or not at all.

Moreover, IQ is neither all-encompassing nor objective. The tests are thought up by humans and the difficulty of the questions and their associated weighting is also guessed at by humans. There is also no universal scale for IQ. The Cattell has a different scale than the WAIS and IQ tests have different upper limits. Some have a perfect score as 160 while others may go up to 200. It isn't an objective scientific measure of intelligence like lifting weights shows how much you can lift. It's nothing more a rough and incomplete estimate. The original intention of IQ tests was just to idenfity students that needed additional help.

Anyway, this has been covered way too many times: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/relationship-bewteen-chess-rating-and-iq Continue the discussion there and mybe a moderator can merge the threads.

Good question could follow. Of the top 100 players in the world what would be the average IQ?  what about top 10 players IQ?

P.S. IQ = Intelligence Quota i believe.

iq = rating  ????

i dont think so

if that is true...

many brilliant people like newton,einstien... would have the rating  3000+

Here's a good way to judge your chess ability that I read in a book:

Take a complex middlegame that your not familiar with, look at it for 10 seconds, and then try to recreate the position. I forgot how the author correlated the number of mistakes to ability. 

Anyways, being able to "see" the entire picture and what's going on isn't necessary encompassed by an IQ test, so I am going with the majority and disagreeing with the statement.

IQ does not equal rating.