What does your chess rating say about your overall IQ?

The original question is not whether intelligence may aid in learning chess, but whether there is a direct correspondence between IQ and elo rating. The idea that so-and-so has a rating of 1150 so they CAN'T have a high IQ, or Nakamura is a top GM so he MUST have an extraordinarily high IQ is baseless poppycock.

Well, I have 700-800 rating; and apparently 128 IQ, so it's a different story for me lol

Baseless poppycock? That's disregarding all the evidence that there's quite a strong tendency for an intellectually able person to be pretty good at all aspects of intellectual activity, I expect. Definitely best to ignore that!

Anyway, you also misrepresented the Nakamura thing. I may have an extraordinarily high IQ but I'm nothing better than a semi-decent chess player. Now don't get all excited, since there was a point to that comment, which is that someone who is an excellent chess player, such as Nakamura, would be expected to be capable of being semi-decent at many other intellectual activities they care to put their minds to, because there's a correlation between abilities at various types of mental activity. "A correlation" doesn't mean "an incredibly strong one" ... just a positive one. It seems like there's a tendency to forget that chess is actually an intellectual activity. That is, it employs or uses the mind.

Of course there are grounds to believe that a quick intellect can be helpful in learning chess. To say that is the ONLY thing that counts, that all people with 125 IQs will become stronger players than those with 105 IQs, and only those with 170+ IQs can aspire to be top GMs IS tommyrot. Work ethic, quality of coaching (especially when first learning) ability to maintain high levels of concentration over long stretches, performance anxiety, willpower, visual memory, visualization ability, many other factors go into one's chess performance; and there is NO evidence that IQ is so paramount as to entirely outweigh all other factors combined.

if there was a correlation between IQ and chess, people who are high IQ should excel in chess, even if they pick it up relatively late in their lives, except this is not the case, all the really good chess players started at a very young age, so they have many many years of experience and same patterns and soforth memorized gazillion of positions and lines, at that it is all to it in chess, sure if you have a natural talent for memorizing patterns or you're a quickthinker, you have an edge, but you still have ot memorize tons of lines, endgame patterns, tactics etc etc, so IQ is pretty much irrelevant here

The "Nakamura thing" is someone publicly taking a standard IQ test, getting a result, and repeatedly confirming that he is satisfied the test and the result is legitimate. Those who have a baseless opinion that IQ is more important to chess success than anything else can believe any poppycock they wish, but why should I take your opinion over Hiraku's?

^^ You misunderstand the meaning of correlation. It doesn't mean causality.

But the original question assumes causality.

I thought that Nakamura is a professional chess player who is in competition with the others. If you think the IQ test he took gave an accurate reflection of his mental ability, that would appear to be your conclusion, for better or for worse .... and maybe Hikaru's but I've no idea what he's said about this. It certainly doesn't reflect the opinions of everyone here.

cool

you're right

In the 1940s an American baseball phenomenon named Clint Hartung, playing in the US Armed forces competition and other amateur competitions, was so good that many major league teams engaged in a bidding war to sign him. He was so talented that most experts believed he would be an instant star and become one of the greatest players ever. After a brief undistinguished career he fizzled out--not through injury problems, he just wasn't really that good. His name became a byword in baseball circles for being misjudged because one's attributes seemed overwhelmingly positive.

Sometimes "the opinions of everyone here" turn out to be hokum, and there is more to success in many areas than raw talent. Nakamura has done very well in chess, but that is not grounds to think his test results and his own opinion of his general intelligence are incorrect.

Well, I'll tell you what. There's certainly a strong correlation between IQ and those who think that IQ correlates positively with chess ability.

Many people misunderstand what "correlation between" means. It doesn't mean "causes" or even "is always found to be in conjunction with". It's a randomly based, statistical probability.

Online tests are scams

fr

Except that it obviously is because it couldn't be otherwise. People make the mistake of thinking that correlation means that everyone who measures low in an IQ test will be worse than everyone who scores higher. There's also the Liberal factor. People who believe in equality for all AND who misunderstand what correlation means ...

Yet many people of average or lower IQ think chess is an activity reserved for "brainiacs" and is beyond their ability, and there seems to be quite a few chessplayers here who don't believe that. Does this mean that the opinion you mention correlates with a lower IQ than you seem to surmise?