IQ= Chess skill?

No kidding, nothing here even rhymes.

Who ousted Tonydal?  

I just asked a guy with a rating of over 2000 about this very subject. I said maybe you are just plain smarter than me with a higher IQ and he said he just had more experience. So maybe it just takes practice and time to get good at chess.

Do you know many people who never study and rarely play but when they do play they play at a GM level? Probably not. If they could that would mean that chess has everything to do with IQ.

I think it's study, practice, familiarity, and hard work that makes a good chess player.

Well, i know a person who's 150 IQ, and he's very good in chess, although he hardly plays it. Two weeks ago he joined a chess club cause he sees that he's good at it. And believed or not he played against the best player in the club and they draw. I mean, this doesn't prove anything but I think it's interesting.

It proves he either plays more than you know or you have a weak club.

Erik.

Ugh...

LOL

Did Tonydal do something bad?

Who's Tonydal?

Chess.com's poet laureate.

I think it works like this:

A higher IQ means you probably have a much better memory and that you can analyze things better than someone with a lower IQ. This means that if person A has a high IQ and person B a low IQ, and they both start playing chess, person A will remember a lot of openings quickly and can apply them which makes his play better than person B, since learning isn't much fun, it means person B will have more difficulty learning the openings and even then he might forget some things and thus it pays off less. This will lead to a smaller chance person B will go on with chess and keeps practising as much as person A, meaning that probably more people with a high IQ start playing, but of course, people with a lower IQ can still learn the openings and maybe they'll also play on.

Now, the rest of the game: strategical insight will be naturally better at person A, MUCH better. Also, person A learns faster so he can learn and memorize the lessons more quickly which leads to the same concept as with the opening (pays off less for person B, smaller chance etc. etc.) and person A can conduct more information from lessons since his analysis is most likely a lot stronger.

Mostly, top players will have had natural talent, and natural talent is almost impossible with a high IQ. I think talent becomes much and much less valuable as you proceed in skill, but everything points out that natural talent increases the chance that someone wants to go on playing a lot. I mean: someone with a low IQ can learn openings, will sooner or later understand and memorize strategical lessons and after a long time maybe come up with strategically strong moves as well, but the chance that he actually thinks it is fun and wants to go on playing is very low from the start.

Conclusion: someone with a low IQ (in this case I think low IQ is almost identical to low natural talent and high IQ almost identical to a lot of natural talent, given the things that a high IQ imply) can become just as good at chess as someone with a high IQ, but it will take him/her a lot longer to get to a decent level of chess, which reduces the chance of him/her even reaching that decent level severely. After that the natural talent will become worthless and the "person A and B" would eventually be maybe almost equally good.

one last example:

Bobby Fischer probably had a lot of fun playing chess: IQ 180+, already beaten an IM at age 13, championships, etc. Which greatly increases the chance he wants to go on with it above someone who doesn't seem to understand chess and therefore won't go to a club or school for chess to go on (or even start) learning.

If we'd talk about a different sport, I'd just have to change "high/low IQ" into "high/low natural talent" since I believe it works like this in other sports too, meaning that I kind of believe in "if you want it you can do it" (not because I want it to be true but because I analyze it to be true)

I'm going to test the theory.

I don't know what my IQ is. It is probably a little higher than a dung beetle. But, I have a system. As white I always play e4. So, I have looked into all of the normal responses for e4 and have spent some time studying them and playing against them...etc. As black I always answer e4 with either c5 or c6. I always answer d4 with Nf6 and play for the Nimzo or Queens Indian. I also always answer Nf3 and c4 with Nf6. Those are the openings I have studied and practiced and that is my system.

As a test I will play against higher rated opponents in some of the tournaments I am in and open d4 and answer e4 d4 and c4 with matching pawns and answer Nf6 with d4 and see what happens. When I lose all of my games I'll come back and show you I suck without study and practice. If I win then you can praise me as the smartest man on earth and each send me a dollar via pay pal in honor of my exhalted IQ.

if you lose, it just shows that you were unfamiliar with what you should do..

I mean, with my rating and you rating you can have an IQ of 200 but you gotta know some stuff about why to do stuff and when to stuff first, but with such an IQ you can learn it very easily if you know where to get the info :P

I am sure having an extremely high IQ helps but it isn't chess skill.

IQ is misleading. My grandpa taught kids with special needs how to play chess and they were geniuses at it. They memorized all the openings and would clobber people.

 I suggest people do  reach their full potential. To say, "I could have gotten better if I'd practised more"; or, "If I'd had more time"; or whatever, is simply explaining why you've reached your full potential.

I'm actually having a good time with d4. I may lose the game I may not, but I think I'll actually pay more attention to this opening in the future. It is refreshing and fun to play d4 when you are used to e4. It's way different.

Of course NO. Chess requires skill and study and not simply IQ.