Popular chess myths to be disproven.

Here is one myth I hear about all the time.

People who play chess are smart.

This is simply not true. Intelligence is not directly related to chess levels, ratings, or anything of the sort. 

I know some smart and dumb people that play chess, I don't see any positive correlation between smarts and chess ability.

It's been a long time coming that people should point out that chess is about training your brain in a certain way. Pattern recognition is the basis of your skill. 

How well you can swerve your way through the endless sea of positions has nothing to do with how sucessful you are in life, or what contributions you have made for society.

This myth comes from the person who has never played or a patzer that is overwhelmed by the game. As a result of feeling small in the big world of chess, they come to a false conclusion tha chess is equated with intelligence, NOT equated with how well your brain can absorb patterns.

If you would like to disprove a myth about chess, then please state it below or just leave a comment about this post.

I should have taken the blue pill.

Okay, well it appears to be the case of correlation vs causation when it comes to school. In my experience in playing chess in high school and uscf chess there were tons of smart and very dumb people that I encountered. 

The Kasparov chess foundation gives a lot of interesting information that chess indirectly can improve life skills, so perhaps it indirectly improves intelligence.

Also,there are a lot of social norms that are designed to prevent people from playing chess. Chess has undeservedly gotten a slightly negative reputation by those who view it superficially.

It has not gained as much popularity as it should because of those who have never played it! 

IMO: People who play chess are generally smarter than the average person. But they are not smarter because they play chess.

I agree. Again, this is a case of correlation vs causation. 

Funny, I was just reading chess myths right before you posted this! 

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/7328/28/

I'd say an average person in a tournament hall would have a higher IQ than an average person off the street. Why this is, however, is up for debate.

I think the op is right.  A friend of mine who I haven't seen since he enlisted wasn't the top of his class.  He only completed highschool in five years instead of the standard four, yet he was one of the three best chess players in the school.

Disagree. However, intelligence is a subjective termanology and I can agree that there are different forms of intelligence.

Being intelligent probably means you are good at chess. Being good at chess does not mean you are automatically intelligent. You could argue that what I just said is semantics but it is not. It makes sense.

This is a very delicate subject, because direct correlation is almost impossible to cite. Here's a pdf regarding the benefits of chess in education: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.psmcd.net/otherfiles/BenefitsOfChessInEdScreen2.pdf Now, we generally consider people who are good in education are smart. And these results are found in research. Can't refute that.

Also, I read it somewhere chess makes use of the right side of the brain which is used for creative purposes.

Don't know about that smartness.     

Maybe idle & ambitious & calculative & puzzle oriented are the right words ?

But it's true, an average man considers chess players as smart. That's why We see chess themes in movies & commercials.

Well, you can' really say that.

        I cannot see anybody who is demonstrably lacking in brain power being any good at chess. This is not to say that you have to be particularly clever to play it well, but being what the Americans would call "dumb" would be an insurmountable handicap in the game.

http://www.chess.com/echess/players

NOT SMART !  Too few draws #

historically, chess has been the game of aristocrats, royalty and aspiring bourgeois who are identified by the masses as being "superior" to the plebeians (the masses think: well, if he's richer than us he MUST be smarter). This does not mean, however, that playing chess makes you smarter, it's more of an illusion for self-aggrandizement (if that's even a word).

The word is self-aggrandization I think. Also, studies have shown that on average chess players are smarter than non-chess players. So while your explanation may be part of it, it clearly isn't the whole story.

Now that the correlation vs. causation horse has been rightfully beaten down to death, I will reformulate the myth in a better way :

You play chess, hence you must be good at X

(usually, X = math/computers or any "cerebral" activity)

And the corollary :

You play chess, hence you must be bad at Y

(with Y = any activity deemed "social" or "creative" such as drinking, poetry, flirting, etc.)

I have also heard quite a lot from patzers

You played move X instead of Y, hence you must be a Z player

(Z = positional/tactical/aggressive/whatever)

Heard when playing move Y would be a huge blunder. For instance after 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 the failure to play 3.Bxf7+ would be deemed "positional play".