Hypothesis: IQ and Chess

I do not believe IQ is the determining factor in what makes a good chess-player. I have an IQ of 140 and I'm just an average chess-player. However I believe that intelligent people are attracted to chess. I believe the most important characteristic is "Board Vision" which is a step beyond pattern recognition. You have to be able to envision the board a few moves into the future. You have to be able to see the potential which lies within a position. But you also need to be very competitive. You have to want to beat the guy and beat him badly. You have to be able to concentrate. Kasparov has spoke of his training to improve his concentration. You have to be focused without tunnel vision. You have to be creative. You have to be a planner. You have to be devious. You need a good memory. But I think "Board Vision" comes first. IQ is not that important. You have to be smart.

wonder whats the average IQ of chess.com members?  seems like anyone who posts is like 130+

I think chess has to do more with memorization and pattern recognition than anything else like IQ or genius and stuff like that. The reason why computers play better chess is because they have access to huge databases that they can tap into at a moment's notice. Every game they play reminds them of the game they played just last week at the local chess club. And it would explain why almost all the older players I know with amazing OTB ratings and titles complain that age is diminishing their talents. The physical aspect has a lot to do with it for sure, but I think more of it is because their memories are a bit fuzzier than before.

My Hypothesis Restated:

Chess is all about memory and pattern recognition and less about IQ.

1. Computers play better because they have better "memories".

2. Older players lose skills they had in their prime partly due to memory loss and cerebral stuff.

Most likely it's 100-110. At least the people who post regularly on the forums can string together two or three words without slaughtering syntax or grammar rules, so I'll give them credit for being slightly above average.

The chances of there being such a large group of people on chess.com with IQs over 130 are ridiculously small. Assume the average value is 130, then that is the top 2.275% of the population, or ~136.5 million people. We have 512,000 members, so that would mean there is almost half a percent of those people concentrated here on chess.com.

Very unlikely.

true true but it is POSSIBLE not likely but POSSIBLE...i assume that chess attracts people with average to above average IQ anyway so the bell curve should be a little skewed on a chess site

Interesting idea, but do you realize that IQ tests are mostly about memory and pattern recognition? In fact, Jeff Hawkins, the author of On Intelligence (a book about artificial intelligence and neuroscience), proposes a memory prediction framework as the general process behind intelligence.

BTW: While chess engines benefit from opening databases, they are not the main reason behind their strength. See this for general info.

The Ultimate IQ test

Three men went to heaven and the first person they encountered was Einstein. He explained to them that he was filling in for St. Peter, who needed a few days off.

"Welcome to Heaven", he told them and then he turned to the first man and asked, "You Sir, what is your IQ?"

The man answered, "Why it's 160"

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Einstein. "We can discuss Cosmic Strings and Unified Field Theory and the Photoelectric Effect."

Turning to the second man, he asked, "What is your IQ Sir?"

The second man answered, "140."

"That's great!", said Einstein. "We can discuss General Relativity and Brownian Motion along with the Mass-Energy Equivalence."

Turning to the third man, he asked, "And what is yours?"

The man replied, "65."

Einstein shook the man's hand and said,"H-e-e-e-y! How 'bout dem Cowboys?!?"

A few weeks ago I was getting it on with smart chick and she said that chess is indeed a game for the photographic minders. She said smarter.

Photographic memory must be a huge advantage in chess. Remembering openings, remembering certain positions and what a grandmaster did, and then understanding the reason, or remembering previous games where a similar situation occurred and resulted in such and such action.

The "Why" that Grandmasters always tell us to understand about moves, is actually an illusion. The why is simply knowing the result if you made an alternative. In other words, the more move sequences you know, the better you are.

Why humans can be better at chess than computers? This is because of strategy and tactics. That's what programmers have trouble programming, it doesn't mean that machines will never achieve this, they will. It just takes more programming. Perhaps they need to add more emotion or impulsive decision making.

IQ is stupid. It doesn't matter the amount of tests you take, that's a good way to cheat it. However, after years I've become smarter, better at puzzle solving, and so I figure out IQ tests much easier and my IQ supposedly increases. But does it? It's very inaccurate.

Intelligence is not a 1 variable item. It's multiple variables, multiple dimensons. I know people who can solve math problems so easily, but they are horrible at programming.

chess is just a lot of silly tricks and nonsense.

as a kid, I remember a mathematics university professor who played chess for decades, but was so easy to beat in the open tournaments (and I mean in the lower section of the tournaments!).

1. "photographic Memory" is a contentious term...there is not any real evidence for it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory#Controversy

2. It is allways going to be a dubious statement to try and equate IQ with inteligence.

3. Related to the above, it is interesting to note that IQ scores fluctuate thoughtout peoples lives, and moreover, IQ seem to correlate strongly with several other factors which we would not necessarily belive related to inteligence ('X' causes high IQ, therefore 'X' is part of someones inteligence...), for example, education level, diet, breast-feeding (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7075511.stm), social class, testing bias (eg. ethnocentric) or whether we are an orphan (see: http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq03.htm) etc all co-relate with IQ but are not necessarily anything to do with inteligence.

An interesting further question is whether we belive our general inteligence to be an unchanging thing, our, can we do things to improve it? (i.e is our inteligence caused by our genes and brain structure* {nature}, or our education, etc {nurture}

* interestingly, a study of tetris demonstrated that what we do with our lives can change the structure of our brain: thus if Inteligence = brain structure, AND IF structure can be changed then our 'natural' inteligence can be, presumably, increased (See: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/how-tetris-changes-your-brain/ )

4. The Flyn effect shows that IQ scores are improving for everyone this leads to one of two conclusions:

a) The general inteligence of the human race is improving. 

b) IQs are improving because IQ measure something which is also improving (e.g Literacy rates are improving worldwide, as is nutrition, health, working conditions, etc)

Compare the children of the British industrial revolution (1700-1800), would it suprise anyone to learn that thier IQ scores would be (i presume!) lower than modern children when our standards of living are so much higher?  BUT...is anyone else a little resistant to conclude that modern children are actually smarter**?

** although in actuallity, this might also be the case: it all depends on how we define inteligence and what we think causes it.

this whole bloody thread is all Eysenk's fault - an' he only developed the IQ thingy cos he was interested in how things are genetically transferred from parents to child

I've seen Kasparov associated with a 190+ IQ. And did Der Spiegel really get Kasparov to take a test? Or did they just conjure up the story? Der Spiegel is not exactly the best of the best when it comes to journalism ..

If chess were all about memory, how could you explain child chess prodigies like Morphy, Fischer and Reshevsky? The latter hardly studied opening lines.

Furthermore, computers have no memories, in the true sense of the word. They operate by very rapidly testing every possible move, which humans have neither the time or stamina to do.

Not so sure about that. If so, where are these chess genii ??

We should dig some of them out to give Carlsen and Anand a run for their money.

 it seems to be well above 140. It makes me feel like a moron.....

It's easy to say something like that, but where is the support for that statement? True, often it's weird to try to prove a negative, compared to asking for proof of a positive and until then being skeptical, but since this idea in general was created rather officially (there are tons of unofficial IQ tests, but the whole concept is not), I'm curious to see exactly how each part is completely useless. It probably has plenty of holes, but any support or examples on how most of the logic-ish questions are absolutely useless? I'm genuinely curious to see.

I'm not assuming either position, because honestly I don't have a strong understanding of "how mental faculties work" at all (my guess is that it represents more pure logical intelligence than like "street smarts" for example, but that's just a modest guess); most people here probably don't. It just seems that you're making quite a strong and arrogant statement, yet have no support of it.