Chess ability and high IQ

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Avatar of exploding_herring

That doesn't seem weird to me at all. With a billion people you have the resources to produce top competitors in a range of sports. And it's also not surprising that some people would rather put their time into the most internationally recognised of a set of somewhat similar games. Of the three you mentioned that's chess. (And if you really must attach a demonym to it should probably be 'Indian', there's nothing American about the origins of the game.)

Avatar of AlohaKauai

Here is a table that links IQ scores to rarity.  An IQ of 190 for example is about one in a billion.  We would expect 7 people on the planet to have IQs that high.

https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

I heard there is a simple formula linking IQ with chess ability.  Multiply your IQ by ten and add a thousand.  That should be your target maximum ELO rating as a full-time chess professional.  Applying that formula to the world's all-time top players, Carlsen would have an IQ of 189.  Kasparov 186 and Caruana 185.

Avatar of LIONSHAPEDBOX

No disrespect to Go... but Chess has a charm no other board game can match.

Avatar of alanzo1i1i
fairytaleLion wrote:

No disrespect to Go... but Chess has a charm no other board game can match.

Monopoly? Hello?

Avatar of Ziryab
AlohaKauai wrote:

Here is a table that links IQ scores to rarity.  An IQ of 190 for example is about one in a billion.  We would expect 7 people on the planet to have IQs that high.

https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

I heard there is a simple formula linking IQ with chess ability.  Multiply your IQ by ten and add a thousand.  That should be your target maximum ELO rating as a full-time chess professional.  Applying that formula to the world's all-time top players, Carlsen would have an IQ of 189.  Kasparov 186 and Caruana 185.

 

Wholly speculative going from IQ to peak chess potential; completely unwarranted going the other way. That's what happens when you apply simple math to complex multifaceted activities that call for a range of skills, especially highly specialized ones that do not transfer into other areas of life.

Avatar of Optimissed
fairytaleLion wrote:

Hi people... what part does IQ play in relation to Chess ability? Are Chess player more clever than most? Are high IQ people drawn to Chess? What sort of IQ is needing for master level? No politic, thanks.>>>

Yes, it's most important not to mention politics. Of course, there are some who would say that chess is an equal opportunities pastime. There's even a debate as to what equal opportunities means. Does it mean opportunities to be the same as others or to be different? It's most important that we shouldn't discuss this kind of thing.

Avatar of wollyhood
ghost_of_pushwood wrote:

Not to mention the fact that the concept of IQ itself is highly speculative...

yes people say you can't prep for IQ tests but you can, have seen it in my own life when I was 18.

Am sure there are limitations imposed on this by aging or depleting cells / more stereotyping as we get older but from listening to GM streams, very few of them have any respect for IQ tests.

Eric Hansen didn't seem to go to Uni or even think that he even could have easily gotten a degree.

Probably wisest to not limit ourselves to give the biggest kudos to tests that can't help but have been designed by people that would do well in them (human's natural ability to stack the deck in our own misguided favour)

Avatar of Optimissed
Ziryab wrote:
AlohaKauai wrote:

Here is a table that links IQ scores to rarity.  An IQ of 190 for example is about one in a billion.  We would expect 7 people on the planet to have IQs that high.

https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

I heard there is a simple formula linking IQ with chess ability.  Multiply your IQ by ten and add a thousand.  That should be your target maximum ELO rating as a full-time chess professional.  Applying that formula to the world's all-time top players, Carlsen would have an IQ of 189.  Kasparov 186 and Caruana 185.

 

Wholly speculative going from IQ to peak chess potential; completely unwarranted going the other way. That's what happens when you apply simple math to complex multifaceted activities that call for a range of skills, especially highly specialized ones that do not transfer into other areas of life.>>>

Indeed, I'm simply not going to reach 2700 FIDE. Firstly, I can't be bothered to do all the studying and practising that would be necessary. Also, I'm far too old. What's the point when there are more interesting things in life? Reversing it, if I'm playing at 1900: let's see .... that formula makes my IQ 90. That seems about right ......

Avatar of wollyhood

Also just to add an even weirder dimension to this discussion, ever since I started watching many bird experiments on line, have been sure that you could teach a bird to play chess, would take serious time but especially with a few pieces it could be possible.

There is a species, is it a nut hatch? That remembers the 100 hiding places of its winter food buried in the snow every year, and Even retrieves the food items in the same order it hid them in! How amazing is that.

Avatar of Optimissed

Truly amazing. Sheep have a good memory for the faces of other sheep. They could be trained to play chess using fields with dry stone walls as the squares.

Avatar of WalangAlam

Guys this is so 90's IQ is over rated having a higher EQ will serve you better in the long run...

Avatar of Optimissed

No such thing as EQ. It's just a hazy concept about understanding other people.

Avatar of Optimissed

Wait, I think what I just said was political. Delete it.

Avatar of Optimissed

But "EQ" is a facet of general intelligence, or IQ.

Avatar of wollyhood
Optimissed wrote:

But "EQ" is a facet of general intelligence, or IQ.

Link please? I thought they had nothing to do with each other, except they are both contentious : )

Avatar of Optimissed

I think it's reasonably obvious that understanding people is just part of understanding the world and that intelligence is the faculty or facility of understanding and using our environment. But really, I'm the person who understands these things and works them out .... and then the academics may well fake up some studies. By and large, they're wasting their time.

Avatar of Optimissed
wollyhood wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

But "EQ" is a facet of general intelligence, or IQ.

Link please? I thought they had nothing to do with each other, except they are both contentious : )>>>

Sorry, I admit I was gently winding things up, Wollyhood. But we can see our emotions in the context of being phenomena .... just like phenomena we encounter in the world, since our environment is closely linked to how we react to it and emotions are very basic reactions to things in the world and the relationships we have with them. When we understand that, learn to step back from our emotions and think clearly, then we think better, which is equivalent to a higher IQ. I suppose it's best to think of this EQ thing as empathy .... where we're empathising with ourselves just as much as with others, since in any case, if we don't understand ourselves we can never hope to understand others.

Is that clearer?

Avatar of Optimissed
IronIC_U wrote:
wollyhood wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

But "EQ" is a facet of general intelligence, or IQ.

Link please? I thought they had nothing to do with each other, except they are both contentious : )

Wollywood is....

CORRECT!>>>

I thought you didn't like to evaluate things as absolutes. You're always making posts commenting on that when others, in your opinion, do it. Wollyhood was asking for clarification. That is not being correct or incorrect.

Avatar of Optimissed

These days there's a superfluity of people who post their ideas and expect that everyone with any intelligence will know that those ideas are correct. I'm not so sure that these people aren't deluding themselves.

Avatar of wollyhood
Optimissed wrote:

I think it's reasonably obvious that understanding people is just part of understanding the world and that intelligence is the faculty or facility of understanding and using our environment. But really, I'm the person who understands these things and works them out .... and then the academics may well fake up some studies. By and large, they're wasting their time.

Yah but heaps of people are super smart and then just highly offensive to other people, like Sheldon Cooper, I would say that represents a huge disparity between his IQ and EQ.