Relationship between Chess rating and I.Q?

This is a very interesting topic. I'm only 15 years old and so far my peak rapid rating on chess.com is 1360 and I've hit a brick wall, I asked myself why, does my chess performance really depend on my IQ? If that where true than itl mean that everyone has a limit to how good they can get at chess and that's easy to believe considering magnus was reported to have an IQ of 190 but I feel like IQ only affect your speed of improvement not your limit. Of course I could be wrong so plz don't send a angry reply saying I got my IQ test from a cereal box. 

 

This is very true. According to this article https://www.science.org/content/article/what-does-iq-really-measure

some part of an IQ score is probably due to the fact that the students who do well are probably motivated to do better on the test beforehand, instead of feeling nervous or anxious or don't want to do it. And this obviously applies to chess, i.e. as in those who are motivated to do better in chess will study and practice and learn and that's why they do better.

I.Q. is supposed to measure your general ability to comprehend, process, and use information; chess rating measures you're chess ability. Obviously, your IQ factors into that somewhat, but the correlation is probably very weak due to the fluid nature of IQ and that fact that for some people their chess rating doesn't reflect their real skill at chess, as a lot of it is due to your chess work ethic.

It is said that Cappablanca never read chess books or studied openings.  There is no doubt that some people have a natural ability for playing chess above the average person.  Also, is it obvious that very few humans have the ability to memorize, calculate and execute in chess like Carlsen, Kasparov or Fischer.  There has to be some connection between IQ and the ability to do some of these things whether a direct correlation or not.  Fischer could remember blitz games he had played 20 years earlier.  The same kind of memory is present in just about all the greatest players.  Someone with a low IQ doesn't have those abilities unless you want to talk about idiot savants.  

Capablanca specifically mentioned a chess book that he would recommend and stated that others on the topic were not of value.

Did he do this without reading chess books?

I admit he probably exaggerated on that point.  However, it doesn't put aside the fact he had a natural ability that beyond dispute was uncanny.  The ability to memorize and calculate is well documented among the top players in chess.  Magnus Carlsen has shown that his memory is super human compared to 99% of people living.  To say  IQ has no relationship to the great chess players isn't worth arguing over.  Believe what you wish.

     As you say, "some people have a natural ability for playing chess above the average person". As you point out, this ability can be found in "idiot savants". Or genius savants, or average-intelligence savants. IQ tests measure the ability to be process information. They do NOT test how well someone has memorized information. The incredible feats of visual memory the top players you mention have NO relation to IQ. 

     Also, most of the reports of the super-genius IQs of famous champions are entirely unsubstantiated. 

It ins't just rote memory.  It is being able to calculate and utilize the information they remember.  I do admit that there is not 100% correlation between Chess IQ and general knowledge IQ.  Most of the people it seems who brag about how high their IQ's are are the ones who never seem to be successful over the chessboard.  How many top rated players brag about how smart they are?  

     The players you talk about didn't sit down and deliberately memorize all those games (other players' as well as their own). They have a very high visual-memory capacity--things seen stick in the mind pictorially. There is a wide range of such abilities, but it doesn't take much imagination to see how an extraordinarily great capacity would be highly valuable for a chess player. This ability bears NO elation to IQ.

In your opinion.  I won't argue with you.

I understand that IQ is a faulty way of measuring intelligence. It is aimed at people of a certain background and often a similar education, so that it may not accurately measure the intelligence of someone who was raised or trained in a different way. A psychologist friend of mine with a PhD in educational psychology, told me that since I was home school, or basically unschooled, an IQ test might not accurately measure my real intelligence. I did not look at things the same way as other people and I don’t perceive problems the same way. My brother, however, who was also raise this way I believe did very well on IQ tests. He was a mathematician, a computer programmer, and so on, and almost all of it was self taught. I leaned more to the literary and artistic side of life. So I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t count to heavily on the IQ test.

Sorry for the typos, they are not to be taken as a measurement of my intelligence please.

It's very improbable that somebody with an exceptionally high IQ would not play as a "Patzer!"

"IQ tests measure the ability to be process information. They do NOT test how well someone has memorized information. The incredible feats of visual memory the top players you mention have NO relation to IQ."

 

Great advice.

 

I will try to memorize even more greatly. Rather than take an IQ Test.

IQ Tests test short term memorizations, but not long term deep memorizing.

Einstein did.

 

...With enough practice.

This is a good conversation

The relationship between high intelligence and natural chess ability is sometimes hard to understand.  Emmanuel Lasker was highly intelligent.  After defeating Steinitz in 1894 and playing in very strong tournaments successfully, he returned to his mathematical studies and received his doctorate (1902) for research on abstract algebraic systems, material used to this day.  But chess was always a sideline it seems for Lasker.  He would be inactive in chess for several years.  From 1901 to 1914, Lasker played in only three chess tournaments to return just as sharp as ever.  Golombeck's Encyclopedia of Chess says some who have analyzed his games accused him of hypnotizing his opponents, casting spells, using psychological methods, playing badly on purpose and of having phenomenal luck.  Bobby Fischer said one time that he disliked Lasker's games because of a lack of natural play.  He much preferred Capablanca's games and considered his play more in line with Capablanca.

After losing the title to Capablanca in 1921 he continued to play in strong tournaments until 1925 and then devoted himself to philosophy, writing and teaching.  He only went back to playing chess again in 1934 at 66 years of age because of financial needs but was very successful, coming 5th at Zurich, 3rd at Moscow in 1935 where was undefeated and only half a point behind Botvinnik and Flohr, 6th at Moscow 1936 and tied for 7th at Nottingham 1936 at the age of 67.  It seems Lasker achieved his success more out of simply strong analytical abilities as opposed to natural chess ability.

 Hou Yifan is another example of someone who had more interest in academics.  She is Four-time women’s world champion and current highest-rated woman player in the world and is only one of three female players to break into the top 100 in the world.  Hou studied International Relations at the prestigious Peking University, and later showed her talent in academia by getting a Rhodes Scholarship at the  Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford University.  If she devoted her mental abilities to chess like Bobby Fischer, Tal or Carlsen and others did who knows what she could accomplish in the chess world. 

I'm only writing this because I admit that its hard to correlate Chess IQ with general knowledge IQ but its also hard to not associate them in a lot of ways.  

i think it's more about how you visualize the pieces, and imagining them in certain scenarios at a very fast rate, which comes with practice but also genetic. i dont know the exact definition of iq, but if you are wondering if your genes play a part in chess, they do. im a 600, so i cant really speak for masters but just wanted to put my thought process out there

The main purpose of a (properly administered) IQ test is to identify what areas of instruction (formal education) an individual may be lacking in. That's what the test was originally designed to do.

It's not a reliable measure of human intelligence (imagine trying to quantify emotional intelligence and creative intelligence with a single number!), even though the modern public now treats it as such.

It's mostly a measure of the extent (and the quality) of education that a person has received.

Many were shocked when Hikaru Nakamura tested a 102 ... but this shouldn't be so surprising, considering the fact that he stopped attending school at a young age, to focus on chess.

Take Hou Yifan, for example. She continued her formal education into adulthood. Because of this, she'd almost certainly score higher on an IQ test than Nakamura, despite Nakamura being the stronger chess player ...

The IQ Nakamura took was a joke.