> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102

His elo peak rating is 2816. Just one example for an extraordinary strong player with average IQ (there are many other examples). I don't think that a high IQ is required to become a decent chess player (like 2000). It may help though.

Nice clickbait. It you watched him take it on stream, you'd know that he was goofing around with his chat and ran out of time b/c he didn't know it was timed.

https://chess.stackexchange.com/a/24946

> The most comprehensive and recent publication I've found related to this question is The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis.

> The bottom line is that according to a meta-analysis of numerous studies, there is clearly a correlation between chess skill and cognitive ability, but cognitive ability explains only about 6% of the variance in chess skill (12% if you only consider numerical ability only). There must be other factors as well (e.g., training), some of which could be more important than cognitive ability.

From my personal observations I very much agree with 6%.

Nowadays anyone bragging about their IQ should be considered a moron and left talking to themselves.

For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3oUqKUx2o0 (first thing that came off my head)

That said, I agree if you brag about your IQ you're a moron.

imperfect measures are not always useless, which is goof since all measures have some error.

A test trying to measure something we can't even properly define is kinda flawed in it's whole premise.

As such the best an IQ test can do is measure how well somebody prepared for a test like that, but it will struggle to properly catch any knowledge or skill domains not covered by the test, of which there are a lot.

You can say "There is this test, and people's scores on this test correlate with various things like, income, marital fidelity, religiosity, incarceration rates, job performance". We call this test the IQ test.

2) intelligence does have some elasticity. When you think of intelligence has a culmination of pathways/heuristics/low-level-techniques, it’s easy to see how many pathways are self-reinforcing and not easily taught or measured. You can be predisposed to a particular kind of intelligence, and not everything is attainable by everyone, but what we call intelligence is close to what we call talent: seems like an innate quality, but actually reflects long-term hard practice with countless hours dedicated.

A lot of IQ test questions get easier the more mathematics you have studied.

The correlation between chess ability and IQ is positive but not that high. not as high as it is with physics and math abiltiy.

So I would definitely think there is correlation between chess and memory. There was a really good documentary about memory called How Does Your Memory Work. Highly recommended, you get to see a glimpse of the workings of Susan Polgar's brain. I might also confuse it with My Brilliant Brain from National Geographic :)

I remember seeing a live post-mortem analysis by Anish Giri. It was just astonishing how fast he can see combinations, yet also how deep those combinations are. And then on top of that throw in a sentence like "Oh, it is not new, it was played in 2006 as well, in that game between him and him". So really, fast thinking, slow thinking, and picking deep into your memory, all at once, seemingly without any effort. That is 2760 ELO for you :)

If you pay attention to it you'll see how far removed from reality a lot of the readers here are. It's quite worrying really.

I'm curious about what you mean.

There are two broad patterns I often see:

The first is where they think everyone on the planet is somewhat like them. You'll see comments like "everyone should be able to program" or even "everyone should program". I've even seen people claim that ability to program should be considered a fundamental life skill. In general it's hugely overestimating not only the IQ but the interests and mindset of the general public. The comment I replied to here is an example of this type.

The other one is where their perception of a baseline standard of living is far higher than that of average people even within their own country. It's usually that they think some luxury item is absolutely essential despite people around the world living healthy and happy lives without it. They seem to be completely unaware that these other people exist.

My theory is that these people have been fed through schools in affluent areas, through university and straight into ridiculously high paying jobs and have simply never had (and probably never will have) any contact with people from other walks of life.

While I'm sure a decent subset of users would fit your description, that's certainly not the case for every user.

The parent comment is making the same point as you about IQ: "I don't think the average IQ 100 individual could ever reach an ELO of 2000 regardless of how much they practice, and half the population has IQs of less than 100."