Being smart definitely would help someone be a good player, but being a good player doesn't mean that someone is smart. Same as any skill honestly. Someone who isn't naturally gifted can get very far in chess with regular practice, especially from a young age. I remember Nakamura took an IQ test on stream and scored a 102 for example.
You can't get far in chess with regular practice if your me more isn't good.
Being good players does mean person is smart, because he simply have high cognitive ability, which means he's already intelligent.
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
And one more thing, you don't measure someone's intelligence just by IQ tests.
I don't think high cognitive ability makes a good chess player. Like I said being smart helps but experience beats intelligence pretty much every time with chess. I'd say having a good memory isn't a requirement either, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean by memory. Do you mean just having a lot of knowledge about the game that you can easily recall? Because that's definitely needed, but I wouldn't call that intelligence. Being knowledgeable is just a matter of taking the time to learn, not being smart.
The last thing about IQ tests—it's just one way to measure intelligence, but it is backed by a lot of scientific research. Pretty much the entire field of Psychology was founded on it, so I don't think it's a bad example that one of the top chess players had an average score on it. Again you can always say there's more to it, but I think it's still worth mentioning.
It's an area of intelligence and covers quite a few things, but does not mean you have to be super intelligent to be a strong player. On the other hand there are many extremely smart people who are terrible at chess. In general the top players have high IQs but it's just a specific area in what would make up overall intelligence.
That's correct intelligence covers quite a few things. I never said you have to be super intelligent to be a good player.
But what I'm saying is some people think that if someone good at chess they must be geniuses in all areas in life, super intelligent etc.. i don't agree with that and others think that being good at chess it's all just a drill , takes time and anyone can do it without being intelligent and it doesn't correlate in anyway with being good at chess I don't agree with that either.
People don't understand what intelligence is, that's why.
Bottom line if you are good at chess you are SMART and that's a FACT ! And I do agree with your post with everything you said. You seems smart and mature bother way , you understand things quite well , much better then other members.