Mr. Wizard, there should be a correltion but rather an indirect one-such as a person with a high IQ may show more skills in chess; however, a person with amazing chess abilities does not necessarily have a higher IQ than someone plays at an inferior level. I have a friend who I struggle greatly when playing chess, but unlike him I have a natural and superior ability to master integral calculus at 15 as well as easily comprehend modern theoretical physics.
Relationship between Chess rating and I.Q?
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KillaBeez wrote:
You are right on the money Mr. Wizard. I have a very high IQ, but my rating doesn't reflect your formula. And I have put in decent time for chess. I also agree with Chelex, which was kind of what I was trying to say.
although it may be my age, I have the same thing.
I used to practice chess in all my free time, but only achieved an otb rating of about 1250, while I have an IQ of 163, which is 2630 on your formula. Though I was around 10 at that time (I stopped playing mostly the past year) I doubt even if I was 30 I could reach close to that.
A lot of other factors go into chess, not just IQ.
intelligence tests are specific to skill sets and generalizing test results beyond those skill sets may lead to imprecise evaluations. these tests only serve some function as there are modest correlations between test results and performance for some profitable purpose. results require not only the means to acquire them but the incentive to achieve them and these factors can always change and some facets of life are beyond control.
From experience that formula seems way off. My IQ is in the top 2% of the population and I suck at chess (although I don't have much knowledge) and when I went to the chess club in my university I was able beat a few physics students (who I assume had fairly high IQ's). On the other hand common sense would indicate there should be significant correlation. Mental skills like spatial visualisation and working memory should be strongly correlated with both chess and IQ. But I suppose the skills specific to either IQ or chess weaken the correlation significantly.
While this "study" cannot be considered scientific in nature, the story in the following link, written by Albert Frank, may provide some food for thought in the discussion of IQ and chess ability.
http://www.paulcooijmans.com/others/albertfrank/whathap.html
GLIA is a high IQ society, accepting the those scoring in the 99.9th percentile or above on several intelligence tests.
I don't think there is much of a correlation between IQ and chess ability. Chess is basically no different from a sport like basketball. To a certain extent you need to be athletic to play basketball, but both are more skill oriented, skill which can be gained by practicing.
For those who didn't click the link above, there is a fascinating puzzle described there: on a 5x5 board, place 5 white queens and 3 black queens on the board such that no white queen can be captured immediately by a black queen, and no black queen can be captured immediately by a white queen.
Be warned though: it's very difficult. I eventually got it, but it took me about 45 minutes. I found it helped to use a real board rather than an on-screen board.
I don't think an equation would be sufficient to demonstrate the relationship between IQ and chess rating if it can't predict the rating reliably. An experiment would probably work better, perhaps of cross sectional design. Just for kicks, groups are assigned as follows:
Population A: High IQ, just learned to move pieces a week ago.
Population B: High IQ, played as a casual hobby for 6 months, but never studied or played in tournaments.
Population C: Average IQ, has studied the game, practices tactics puzzles daily, is in a chess club and has played in tournaments.
Population D: Average IQ, has just learned to move pieces a week ago.
All participants are unrated. Members are randomly selected through age-gender-ethnicity, since we are looking for representative sample of "potential" chess ratings across IQ and experience levels only.
All four groups will play against an outside group of unafiliated, officially rated players through a series of 30 games to get individual ratings for every participant. Groups ratings will be compared across each of the 4 populations, of particular interest for me is the ratings between populations B and C, where workhorses with average IQ are compared against high IQ players with a passing interest.
Who do you think will do best?
That sounds like a study you could start, since you're naganaworkhere anymore.
Just watch out for "the Bobs".
More fruitful IMHO would be to discuss whether there is any correlation between high IQ and low emotional intelligence......no?!? OK then......
Oh, those Bobs. What justice is there if Peter gets a promotion? They probably did it using an equation that didn't recognize my excellent networking skill!
Just be careful not to land yourself in a PMITA prison!
samir_naganaworkhere wrote:
I don't think an equation would be sufficient to demonstrate the relationship between IQ and chess rating if it can't predict the rating reliably. An experiment would probably work better, perhaps of cross sectional design. Just for kicks, groups are assigned as follows:
Population A: High IQ, just learned to move pieces a week ago.
Population B: High IQ, played as a casual hobby for 6 months, but never studied or played in tournaments.
Population C: Average IQ, has studied the game, practices tactics puzzles daily, is in a chess club and has played in tournaments.
Population D: Average IQ, has just learned to move pieces a week ago.
All participants are unrated. Members are randomly selected through age-gender-ethnicity, since we are looking for representative sample of "potential" chess ratings across IQ and experience levels only.
All four groups will play against an outside group of unafiliated, officially rated players through a series of 30 games to get individual ratings for every participant. Groups ratings will be compared across each of the 4 populations, of particular interest for me is the ratings between populations B and C, where workhorses with average IQ are compared against high IQ players with a passing interest.
Who do you think will do best?
a great chess talent will emerge from any category possible. and many high IQ people will be unable to 'find their way' into the game whereas few people in the lower brackets might take to it extremely naturally, learning to sacrifice pawns or exchanges as early as week 4, forcing resignation from their 'high IQ' opponents immediately. then it will be known that 'IQ' has not much to do with chess ability. only way that IQ seems to help chess is in logical thinking, but logical thinking is not what chess is about to any great extent because chess does not follow rules.
a great chess talent will emerge from any category possible. and many high IQ people will be unable to 'find their way' into the game whereas few people in the lower brackets might take to it extremely naturally, learning to sacrifice pawns or exchanges as early as week 4, forcing resignation from their 'high IQ' opponents immediately. then it will be known that 'IQ' has not much to do with chess ability. only way that IQ seems to help chess is in logical thinking, but logical thinking is not what chess is about to any great extent because chess does not follow rules.
Based on your predictions, then you expect that populations A and D would be generally equal if they were to get a rating, since groups B and C cannot be compared the same way with their differences in experience. There will be exceptional performances from individual differences within each group, but I don't think is enough to affect the curve of each group, to make the trends any less meaningful. This only looks at the variables from a correlational viewpoint anyway.
sapientdust wrote:
For those who didn't click the link above, there is a fascinating puzzle described there: on a 5x5 board, place 5 white queens and 3 black queens on the board such that no white queen can be captured immediately by a black queen, and no black queen can be captured immediately by a white queen.
Be warned though: it's very difficult. I eventually got it, but it took me about 45 minutes. I found it helped to use a real board rather th
an an on-screen board.
I gave up after 20 minutes and brute forced it with my computer
EDIT: Took out solution
why do you need brute force for that?? or was it some kind of joke i didnt understand??
Well, it's pretty tough. The placement of the queens is not at all intuitive.
FancyKnight wrote:
sapientdust wrote:
For those who didn't click the link above, there is a fascinating puzzle described there: on a 5x5 board, place 5 white queens and 3 black queens on the board such that no white queen can be captured immediately by a black queen, and no black queen can be captured immediately by a white queen.
Be warned though: it's very difficult. I eventually got it, but it took me about 45 minutes. I found it helped to use a real board rather th
an an on-screen board.
I gave up after 20 minutes and brute forced it with my computer
I'm curious though whether your program searched for all solutions or stopped at the first solution. I found the same solution (except mine was flipped about the vertical axis), and am curious if there are others. I don't think so, but would like to know for sure. The reason I don't think there is another solution is below. Highlight the text to view it, but there are spoilers if you want to solve it yourself.
The reason I don't think there are others is that there is a logic to the solution (which is how I solved it). The configuration of the three white queens in your diagram seems to be the minimal grouping for three queens, where they block each other the most, and two such groupings should probably be a knight's move away from each other to not interfere with each other. There didn't seem to be any way to get the two 3-queen configurations on the board without being unable to place one of the other white queens on the board, but if the black 3-queen configuration is in the top left corner, shifting the entire pattern one file to the left leaves an obvious location to put the black king that fell off the edge and the two white queens. There still could be other solutions though, but my intuition suggests there are no other solutions (ignoring symmetry).
Yereslov wrote:
Estimating the IQ of countries is a pointless task.
i already explained that even if you could, you need to look at the players themselves....looking at the others only askews the data. the national iq averages wont account for popularity or things like the russian programs to isolate chess talent in children...
The list I published yesterday about the IQ averages per country, shows an interesting point: the country with more GMs and more World Champions of all times has an IQ % of 96, the site 28 in that hit parade. Search the individual IQ of each GM is an impossible task for me. On the other hand, I found out that IQ is not as important to chess as study, training and practice to reach the goal of became a great player. Logically, the greatest geniuses of chess has a high IQ. A genius is one in a million, and don`t matter if the name is Kasparov, Carlsen, Fischer, Karpov, Tal, all they are gifted men with minimum differences of IQ percentage between them.