Do you need really high IQ to be great at Chess?

Bobby Fischer had an IQ of 181. And Garry Kasparov had an IQ of 190. This is near the highest bracket of Intelligent Quotas in the whole world.

And these are the two greatest players chess has ever seen (besides Karpov, but I could not attain any IQ information by him )

Depends on how you define great and how you define IQ. Most people can reach master with enough study and starting young. Most prodigies who are GMs at a young age don’t necessarily have to have an overall high IQ, but the section of the test called “perceptual reasoning” which measures problem solving, calculation, and the ability to visualize steps of a problem in the mind almost certainly needs to be quite high.

You only need high IQ if you are spamming the London in bullet.

I think Kasparov had IQ of 135, not 190 I’ve seen it in old article of Der Spiegel Magazin, most likely your 180 for fischer is also a fishy number. Chess only depends on some specific talents not general IQ (e.g. memorization and pattern recognition in a very specific form). If your general IQ is high, most likely you will be a good chess player not necessarily outstanding, also if you are a chess genius, it could be that your general IQ is just average. It’s very unlikely that all of top players have a very high IQ. Thus if your IQ is low, you still have a chance to become a good chess player. It is easy to see whether you have a chess talent: just see how you progress.

No. I don’t think so? Like IQ make you smart but Idk how to explain.

High IQ will let you improve faster, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will make you great. 

Your greatness depends on your investment of time and energy to learning and improving in chess.

kind of

Look at this game:

GM Perelshteyn vs. GM Carlsen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-8x6qVg5Jg

In the game, since GM Perelshteyn is also an openings master, Carlsen got into trouble with his king, But... he managed to get out of it, and win the game, due to his calculation ability. - that's not normal.

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Now look:

Magnus Carlsen Takes the 100 Endgames Test!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SCXb2WA2U

minute 25:20

 

he inserts the position into his head, closing his eyes for a few seconds, and then solves it in about 5 seconds - that's not you and me. - that's a super brain - when I close my eyes I see a black screen.

These are endgames which he never studied...

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The defence rests

Both of those given IQs are fictional. Someone has made each of them up.

I hate when people believe that being good at chess and high IQ are inseperable. No, they are not. Just like in any other activity, having a high IQ is a big boost and helps a lot, but its not neccesary to play chess. And it goes both ways. Just because you have high IQ it doesn't mean you will be great chess player. People with high IQ tend to be better at almost everything they try compared with regular folks. That is how it goes. Playing chess has to be separated from how smart (or how high your IQ) is.

Firstly, it's debatable whether IQ tests measure anything other than how well someone performs on IQ tests. It's possible to improve at IQ tests with practice, and populations overall tend to improve in line with economic development. None of this should be the case for an objective measure of brain "horsepower".

 

Secondly, one extrapolation that often leads to bad conclusions is pulling inferences from world-class athletes / players etc to make overall broad statements. 
The very best chess players are indeed very intelligent with super-human pattern-recognition, visualization and calculation skills. However, it's also the case that chess is 99% about how much you've studied. The guys who believe chess is about intelligence are usually the guys who end up rage quitting because they take losses personally and don't study what they did wrong.

It's only at the very top echelons of the game where the 1% starts to matter because all professional players will have maxed out the study component.

Having a high IQ implies, mainly, that the player can learn faster and easier. Theoretically speaking, we can assume that a "brilliant" player can reach a high level of play in a shorter amount of time.

Though I'd argue that a player with a "normal" IQ can still reach that same level of play. They may simply need more time and effort to do so.

Going back through the great players of the past, you'll see that, in nearly every era, there were "brilliant, natural" players and "studious, workhorse" players - both of whom reached dizzying heights.

There's a natural fascination with the "brilliant" players, as their dominance seemed effortless. Though I find the "workhorse" players more impressive, as their accomplishments were harder to earn.

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I mean, I don't think someone with a really low IQ would ever be very good at chess, but no I don't think chess ability and IQ are a 1:1 correlation either.

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But what's "objective"? Clearly it isn't anything definite and observable. Therefore "objectivity" is nothing more than the *attempt* to factor everything in. Clearly impossible in an ideal World, which consists only of models. So, IQ tests are intended to measure problem solving ability, which is probably the best line we can have on measuring intelligence. Obviously, some are better at it than others and therefore it does have some "objective" basis. Chess consists of a series of problems or puzzles.

Anyhow, plenty of people do very well at chess with minimal study, if they're very intelligent and so it could be the other way round .... study only really matters the higher one goes.

"I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers."
-- Stephen Hawking, on being asked about his IQ score.

Don't accept that. He simply evaded the question in order to try to look "cool" but it was a relevant question.