My Hypothesis on Chess and IQ

 Wow!! I don't know whether you get that from observation or from reading (because honestly I haven't read something like that). But that is very true.

In other fields, some think I fall into this slow learner category. I think they are right and wrong at the same time.

My argumentation to "them" has been that I don't draw conclusion before enough data are gathered. Also I don't react to "open" questions before the questions are made specific. I don't like to say "that depends...", while to others it seems have no dependency to anything at all.

Honestly I think that as I grew older I have a tendency to change from quick learner to slow learner. But it seems because of "change" in methodology or approach.

As for chess, I think I'm a "slow" learner. Though this is not 100% true. The fact is that I like to play with people until I met someone a few level stronger than me, then I stop playing (and often go back to my computer). Later I come back, beat him, and play in a relatively higher level than before. Those "benchmarks" are chess players who train themselves day and night. I'm not really a chess player myself.

And I think I'm a slow learner who gathers plenty of chess information and wait for them to click and hope I can later "float". You and I can see my low rating, and/but I'm not too dumb to not understand what it takes to go to GM-level. But still, I want to try.

A common good advice to improving players is to stay away from opening. This is because the opening knowledge will not improve your rating. That is true, but not 100%. The knowledge is usefull, it is just you need to improve your tactics or other skill aspects more to see a direct result. But when your objective is not set for your rating today, I believe that my approach is still valid, to study as many kind of positions that may arise from many openings, so I will understand how to handle any kind of chess positions.

I went to a family reunion and my 12 year old cousin wanted to play and she had just learned the rules maybe a month ago.  She had only played a few games with her dad -- and her play was recognizable, development, castling, pressureing the center.  It went into a middle game and she didn't blunder any material until 30 or so moves into the game which is really incredible for a beginner if you think about it.  I don't know if she knew what she was doing or just imitating how her dad played and happened to be lucky to avoid tactics.  She didn't want to play again.  This was 3 or so years ago, I forgot about it until you said something, I should try to look her up :)

Huge flaw? This is the most qualified argument/research I have found so far.

IQ is IQ, accept it. You cannot improve it dramatically when you're an adult.

It's not simply about age and time. It's about organ defficiency/defect. Your skin deteriorates over time. So is your kidney, heart, and brain cells. An adult "intelligence" comes from experience, but children "intelligence" comes from good working brain cells.

That myth that we only use a small % of our brain is completely incorrect. It has been refuted multiple times. Sorry I couldn't comment on the rest of your post but I could not understand it. Please use proper English and grammar.

Not really. If everyone is willing to learn and listen, compare arguments and pick the most logical ones, nothing is difficult to understand. But some people were just born with no trait to try to understand the universe. They express their opinions but they don't have the drive or the need to find out if their opinion is correct or wrong, just don't care.

I don't know if this has ever been done, but my guess is that it would actually be possible to teach a higher ape to play chess and they might actually be pretty good at it.  The concept of horizontal, vertical, diagonal wouldn't seem to be beyond their grasp so that would mean you could teach them the rules at least (through reward conditioning).  Then maybe after a year of intensive training they could actually play a game.  Haven't read the thread, just wanted to say this.

Even something like an octopus or a crow can solve a complex, multistep problem.

People with higher IQ's learn faster. That is all.

And there is something that I believe many don't understand. When people talk about how difficult and impossible it is to become a GM, they usually refer to the history, best practice, or refer to anything that they can see around them. The fact is, only a few if any, intelligent people who decided to become a chessplayer. You cannot find many intelligent people OTB. This is because chess requires hard work that doesn't pay off in term of financial income. With the same amount of hardwork most intelligence people can become a successful big company leader.

Well, of course many (if not most) highly intelligent people have weird personality, introvert, inability to work with others, inability to make themselves accepted by public and some other characteristics needed to become a successful person.

And that is where chess has its own merit. If you can play chess well, however "bad" your behaviour is, nobody can stop you from becoming a successful chess player.

I have an IQ in the 140's. I'm not that great at chess. But I would say it's because I haven't studied it enough. I stopped playing for like 5 years, with an occasional game here and there, so that contributed to it. According to the formula, I could achieve 2400+ if I worked at it. Wow. I don't know about all that but it's a nice way to keep optimistic lol.

Anyway, there are different types of intelligence. Body, spatial, logical, musical, etc. 

If you read all the posts above and make conclusion, you will find out that you can achieve a lot more than that. But may be you haven't got an idea of how much work you should put into it (Athletes usually love what they are doing so the level of work can be outstanding without being noticed).

Sure, but not all of them can be quantified. That's why IQ is important, because it can be measured. Tho imo it is not 100% clear what intelligence facets it measures. I myself prefer to group intelligence into two: "verbal" and "non-verbal". This is my own term so it might be confusing. I believe it corelates to "left brain" and "right brain". In the "non-verbal" side you can find supranatural intelligence. Haven't heard about that? :D

There is surely some correlation between IQ and chess ability, but given the multifaceted nature of both of them, your conclusions aren't going to be very accurate. That is to say, people are intelligent in different ways, and good at chess in different ways. Narrowing down the correlation between specific aspects of intelligence and chess ability would be much more interesting.

I would guess one of the other major limiting factors in chess ability might be the age one started learning it (and started thinking about it seriously). The children learn in very different ways to adults, and in fact for most things it's much more effective --for example learning language, sports and musical instruments. It would be interesting to see the relative importance of IQ versus the age one started playing chess (say, before or after age 16). Did any Grandmasters ever start playing chess only as adults?

This is an interesting area of discussion (seen by how often people like to look into it :)) but I believe that it is far more complex an area of study...

Theory says that IQ is a measure of mind things / chess is a minds sport ergo the two must be in correlation... maybe...

lets look at one example: those of high IQ often have very 'active' minds (butterfly minds) meaning that they pick up concepts very quickly, however this can also be a disincentive to go deeper into learning - they can see so many possibilities / are aware of so many routes forward they can't choose one to focus upon...

there might be a theory therefore that too high an IQ might be a burden rather than an advantage... perhaps there is a strong positive correlation that as IQ increases so does potential chess rating until point x where it flattens off / drops as someone becomes too bright :)

I am sure that there is scope for some interesting study, but it will never be all that simplistic...

and as for the forumla above - if accurate, then someone with an IQ of 150 has a potential rating of 5000, and someone of IQ170 has a potential of rating of 7000! perhaps needs refining...

Alasdair

Actually my post was not directed to you personally. What motivated me to write this thread was because I couldn't believe why people couldn't understand how simple (according to my thinking of course) the relationship between chess and IQ was. In my spirit of discussion, people should learn from others, compare opinions, seek the truth, and then hopefully in the end come with an agreed conclusion, so there will be no more discussion/thread of the same classical debate.

No, that is an opinion from uninformed people.

Why should Einstein be interested to become a chessplayer? He can spend a few months to become a good violinist but with that level of time investment he couldn't become a chess master.

Of course not true. And those numbers are a result of people had nothing else to do. And when you say "genius", you should know that there's a known accepted definition of it in relation with IQ level. I think currently there's no geniuses in 100 world top chess players.

May be just a language issue, but there's no relationship between level of chess understanding and IQ improvement. IQ improvement happens when we are very young. After that (in adultery), most of the time we will see a decrease.

Of course, just like in any other fields. We are not discussing whether IQ and ELO has a "straight line" relationship, aren't we? Because it should be in the "pre-requisite knowledge".

There are many kinds of IQ test, but ideally they should not be affected by experience, which is difficult to achieve. Even if the test is varied based on age, you can see that adults have a rich experience that will affect their IQ (i.e. a false increase)

I've learnt that IQ number doesn't say anything because the theoretical accuracy is quite low. The important thing is how you perform compared with others at the same time and with the same test.

When I was 7 years old, smartest students of 9 years old from all schools were tested for their IQs. I was the only one with different age, may be because the teachers were interested to see my IQ. My IQ was 125 and it was the highest from all students. If you see at the number, it was too small. If you test me now, may be the result is higher (actually it was higher in later tests), but it doesn't mean that my IQ is increasing. What I can feel is it is decreasing.

If I put my hardwork on chess when I was below 12 the result may be better than if I put the effort now. But now I have more experiences so I can be a teacher for myself (if you're young you need an experienced teacher).

Yes, "smarter and faster work" is one of the key either in improving in chess. Computer technology is improving, and so the teaching/training methodologies. Old chess players will soon be replaced by young prodigies trained by masters. They just need incentives. But before the competition chart reaches it's equilibrium, old players like me will still have a chance I believe.

I am an expert in this field and after writing many a wall of text, I have come to the conclusion that IQ is (but may be) not correlated with chess peformance.

Here is some relevant data:

IQ      Chess Performance

Beep          Boop

Bip           vroom vroom

Thank you.

I do not remember where I read that there are only three fields where true virtuosity occurs: math, music and chess.

Being a virtuoso doesn't mean you have a high IQ, it means that you extraordinarily and naturally grasp the workings of a given field and exploit those abilities far beyond what other "normal" human beings will ever reach.

Easy to miss the point when looking for a connection between measured intelligence and chess performance.

Intelligence quotient tests measure one's ability to assimilate, process and restate information - often in new modalities, resulting from having to use past experience to process a problem set one is unfamiliar with.

One's ability to score well depends upon many factors - some possibly innate, others learned, others "trained."

Anyone claiming that IQ is irrelevant to chess performance, must simultaneously accept that this measure is also irrelevant to aptitude in mathematics, composing, advanced science.
While it is popular (even populist) to claim that "anyone can succeed, if they apply themselves" - it's very likely that some brains have just been better wired, both from birth and through early and varied challenges that created a quicker mind. The brain is optimally malleable when one is very young, and many studies have shown that kid's brains are going unused and unchallenged - because we want to spare them from "hard work. They should enjoy their innocent childhood."

Here's a kid whose young brain was exposed to his father's chess computer program. The kid found out how to set that program to Autoplay, and the chess computer would play through an endless series of games, while the kid watched.
His brain was chess-shaped by this, and he's this weekend trying for his third GM-norm.
http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Tournois/Belfort_2005/Belfort_nounours.htm

Most likely, parents thought that having kids be exposed to chess programs on computers was a fine and intellectual pursuit, and therefore they did not object. The result being that we're now seeing an absolute deluge of precocious kids playing at IM and GM level - making it very painful for their grownup opponents to accept that they're being wiped off the board by kids. (Ivanchuk vs. So, for instance.)

Does Nyzhnyk, the kid in the picture, possess a high IQ, by standard measures? I doubt it, if anyting, he's probably even more single-minded in his obsession than Bobby Fischer. But his mind is nonetheless capable of intellectual work at extremely high levels, thus demonstrating an aptitude not commonly found. And it's not unlikely that this aptitude can transmute to other areas.

For instance, as a general rule, chess players of a very high level have exceptionally good language skills. They may not master the dialect of other languages, but their grammar is beyond reproach. Something one can easily establish through various chess DVDs and online-videos. Peter Svidler, for instance, has English language skills that bespeak an extremely versatile mind - but he's not unique. And even when they're struggling with the correct pronunciation, and hunting for the right word, non-English chess players will express themselves with excellent grammar.

Topalov's Spanish, as well as Anand's Spanish, are likewise of a very high level, revealing a desire to master this foreign language correctly.

That is possible when you have a versatile mind of high capacity, and when you're no stranger to the work required to attain near-perfection -- which is a mainstay of all top level chess players, even those who pretend they don't put in any effort.

At the highest level, chess is combinational math theory, psychology, knowledge of human behavior, supreme memory skills, and a number of other capabilities associated with the trained, and trainable, mind.

This is an interesting topic. But it doesn't matter how interesting it is, one must always give solid proof in order to convert those who disagree. I've yet to see any solid proof about the connection between IQ and chess. I'm not saying there can't be any connection, but how do you prove it exists? You would need a huge amount of players from every possible level (and both men and women). Without that, all these "facts" are meaningless fragments of information.

 I agree.. but without the quotes on chimp

I have read many posts on this topic since joining. Is there a correlation between chess play and IQ/Intelligence? Maybe, maybe not. But let's take it one step further...so what if there is, or is not? There are a lot of intelligent serial killers, rapists, drug dealers, pedophiles etc. out there as well...and maybe a lot of them can play chess too. The point is, high intelligence is not always used for good, and no guarantee for high morals, values etc. Who do you think is responsible for identity thefts, hacking, white collar-crime, virus creations etc? Who do you think caused the last recession? Yes...intelligent people...but intelligent does not always equal good.