Extrapolating IQ scores to potential in chess

Any reasonable person, who has played a lot of chess, will tell you the most important thing is work.

Work as hard as Fischer did, starting at the age he did, and pretty much anyone would make it to the top 1%. This is still far from GM, but really @#$%ing good.

Just from personal experience, when I've met super-smart people who play chess (a couple of guys from my club come to mind who are university professors and recognised experts in their fields), they haven't been any stronger than average club players. I'm inferring that these guys have the sense to use their huge brains for more useful things than chess  Perhaps if they applied themselves to chess then they would be very strong, who knows?

There's one guy in particular who comes to mind. He's sadly deceased now, but used to be in my club and I got on well with him and played a lot of friendly games. He was head of a department at Cardiff University and an internationally respected expert in ancient history, as well as lecturing religion, archaeology, languages and god knows what else. He was about 1500 and I used to repeatedly annihilate him, much to his great annoyance and frustration 

To be fair, there will probably be a lot of posters on this forum with a high IQ and many of them will be attracted to such a thread as this one. I know that the internet is full of people full of false claims but I prefer to take people as they present themselves and as I find them. Sure, there are going to be those who think it's more than a bit coincidental that so many people with high IQs have emerged here; and I also believe there are going to be a few who are kidding others or kidding themselves but I don't know who this applies to. I can see quite a few people who seem pretty bright, though.  Maybe you do know who the false claimants are, Mr dpnorman?

Surely you must be aware that GM really stands for Giant Member?

Yeah, I've known a few university professors who play regularly at the club. They tend to be in the 1700-2000 range. Pretty good, but obviously not great. More than deciding not to use their brain for chess, I think they have a lot of work to do in their professions and just don't have time / energy for chess.

I know a really bright guy, I'd guess IQ around 140, who was pretty terrible even after a few years. Like 1200-1300. (140 IQ isn't much in internet land, but in real life it's pretty good )

Maybe I shouldn't call that terrible. No offense to 1200-1300 of course. It's just after a few years if you're so smart, why not higher?

I knew another guy like this, and he's 2200. Sure that's pretty good, but it's nowhere close to GM. He studies hard and after many years can't seem to crack 2300.

Nice post Deirdre

Intelligence is just one factor that might help being good at chess.

There are other factors that are far more relevant: In particular the age you start playing / studying chess and the amount and the quality of work you invest. Not to mention your personality. 

Someone with an IQ of 150 who starts playing chess as an adult will not become a GM.

Here's a recent relevant study:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160913124722.htm

There is only moderate correlation. Chess is its own animal, in terms of the ability to calculate, understand forced moves and continuations or to be able to filter out all possible moves and create candidate moves. This can have correlation in IQ tests because those tests test pattern recognition within language and words, but chess does so with checkmate patterns. In order to make a comparison between IQ and Chess, you have to understand chess, and some genius minds simply don't.

Furthermore, IQ tests are more oriented to "critical thinking" skills oriented towards schools and find themselves reiterating within educational institutions, but no matter how strong a chess teacher or grandmaster is, they can only learn by truly seeing and applying theories, which is what I mean by based on wisdom, where college and IQ tests expect you to know trivial answers and people without applying those theories.

Also, this assumes people with high IQ's play chess, which is not always accurate. 

Suggested website in previous post: https://www.arealme.com/iq/en/

So, I took the IQ test suggested; however, I doubt the result is the IQ. Notice that the number provided is over 200. Dividing the number yields a percentage. I believe the percentage is your position under the Bell Curve (see post #42). My result was considerably higher than 150 and I know my actual IQ is not nearly that high - perhaps a handful of people on the planet! However, when I look at the result's position under the curve as a percentage, there is a correlation with my actual estimated IQ. 

The only real way to determine a correlation would be to find groups of both high and low IQ people who have never played and know nothing of the game. Have them spend a significant amount of time learning the game and see if there is a correlation between IQ and how fast and how well one learns chess. I suspect the high IQ people would learn faster but finding out if they learn better and become higher ranked over time would be very interesting. This would have to be a LONG term study and it would be very expensive. Not sure anyone has put that much into the process of finding out. 

The only thing that really determines how well you do on the chess board is luck. This entire thread is nonsense.

There were two guys at my club years ago that also come to mind...one was a university math teacher and the other was High School Science teacher. Both were really smart when you talked to them, but were easy for me to beat at chess....and they did not get much better with time and study either, so there is something "intangible" about being a good chess player. The art teacher was really hard to beat, so go figure. I've never meet a dumb person that was good at chess, but I've met a lot of otherwise average people that are good, and a bunch of "smart" people that are not.

If a supposedly high IQ drives one mad, as it happened with BF, I'd rather prefer the IQ of a cat. Anyone seen a mental clinic for cats? What about mental facilities and disorders for humans? Are there any? :)

I don't think IQ has anything to do with chess. sure it shows that you're smart in different categories but with chess different variables can happen. such as stress, bad mood, lack of experience can play into it. you could be extremely smart but if you've never played chess or not as much you just won't have a high rating. I would consider myself not the brightest person but I have a USCF number of 835(soon to be) in two years

I know who Ganesh is lol. I'm not Indian tho

Go to the top of the general knowledge class!

I should