Given your IQ, what's the highest Chess rating you can realistically attain?

Chess and IQ are not related in the slightest.  The ability to play Chess well is nothing more than Chess playing ability, which comes through practice. 

As for being able to achieve anything you put your mind to, this is theoretically true for the average person with regards to potential.  However, life doesn't work exactly like that. 

"Life is what you make it."  This is also a half truth.  Circumstance plays the biggest role here.  The world you are born into, the people around you, the opportunities or lack of them.  These are the things that mould people into what they eventually become. 

All a person can do is make the best of what they have and try to make the right decisions at the right time.

Another formula quoted in a previous thread was:

IQ x 10 + 1000 = Max.Rating 

but I agree with the general view that you can't really reduce it to formulae, which are only guidelines. 

Not this kind of thread again...

 Numbers 1, 2 and 5 are directly related to IQ.

Winning Chess by Chernev and Reinfeld is another good basic book on combinations(that one helped me a lot.)  Combination Challenge by Hays and Hall is another. 

I take your point about pattern recognition but I feel that the human brain will naturally seek patterns in things and interpret them as it sees fit, this is why you can occasionally see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast or whatever. 

The patterns in Chess are defined by the rules of the game and are mostly recognised by people who have played the game for a long time. 

I'd be willing to believe that the IQ factor maybe affects how quickly someone can become proficient at Chess but I don't think it affects their overall understanding in the long run, that is only going to come with the experience of many games. 

In recent times Kasparov has been the dominant force in Chess, but for all the people in the world who play this game do you really believe he has a bigger IQ than all of them?  I'd bet my house he doesn't.  What he has is experience and a well groomed background in Chess.

As for knowledge attained through Chess literature, knowledge without application is almost entirely useless.  The people who write these books are seasoned Chess players, you might pick up bits of useful information but you're not going to attain the same level of understanding without the experience.

I shouldn't comment on Chess books.  I've never read a Chess book in my life, I knew what a fork and a pin was before I knew they had names.  All my experience comes from the games I've played in.  I've always found it hard to be interested in other peoples games.   

The greater evil is to lower your estimations of what you're capable of.  A person like this likes to pat himself on the back as he proudly sees himself as the sensible realist. You fool! You're no realist. You're a low expectation schmuck!

You may show little promise as a "professional" chess player, but I would bet you can become a pretty competent "above average" chess player with your well above average intelligence quotient.

If your IQ is 98 I wonder what mine is. Probably like 80 :(

My cousin has an IQ of 160, he got a 35 on the ACT as sophomore, he can hear a song once and after maybe 15 minutes of trying can play it on almost any instrument you've got handy, he memorized my credit card number after looking at it less than a minute as a joke (I didn't like that ...) but he can't play chess worth anything, he's played with his brothers before and we've played games and for him to win I basically have to start without both rooks and some pawns...

I'm sure he could eventually be really good, but it seems a lot harder for him to process than your average guy, I think he'd have to work really hard at it.

Bottom line is, there are different areas of intelligence.

My IQ is 170 and I'm average at best in chess.

170 according to what online IQ test?

I flunked DRAW THE PIRATE, but my IQ is climbing steadily (Irritability Quotient)

This thread is a nasty little mindrotter, and I lost 10 precious IQ points just reading through it. Gonna cap it off with some blitz to really seal the deal.

:-)

I believe Kasparov took an actual IQ test and scored 135. As for the rest, I wouldn't trust unsubstantiated figures (Fischer's, for example, gets cited as high as the 180s+).

But if you understood how the IQ formula works you'd know that the age of the person at the time he took the IQ test makes all the difference in the world. For example, an IQ of 180 at the age of 10 simply means that the kid has the intellect of the average 18 year old. It's impressive for a kid to be so mentally advanced, but the average 18 year old is very far from being what anyone would consider brilliant.

I could be wrong, though.

Hey Eo__, what in my post gives you the information that I "don't understand how the IQ formula works" or how this impacts any of the reputed scores?

Fischer's was reputedly taken in high school, and there's virtually no evidence that he took a real IQ test. It exists as rumor only, in main perpetuated by Brady.

To respond to the posted "The Psychology of Chess Skill", it was very interesting. I had my own opinions about what makes a GM great, but if it's true that Kasparov could play within about 100 points of his tournament strength in simuls, then it seems convincing. Of course, that's not necessarily what makes you a regular master though, who maybe are quite good at calculating but still have less experience than the GM giving them much less patterns in their mind. So I guess pattern recognition is a pretty big part, but I think strong intuition, willpower, courage, calculation skill, evaluation skill, and positional strength are all very important too.