Do you need to be clever to be good at chess?

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Chess is widely associated with great intellect, but is that actually true? Is there any connection between chess players and higher IQ levels? Let’s dive into the topic!

I’ve been playing chess for many years, and it has greatly improved my logical thinking and pattern recognition abilities. as well as many other skills (accuracy of thinking, self-accountability etc) .
In recent years, during conversations with friends or even in interviews, I’ve been asked many times to talk about chess and why I started playing, the benefits and so on. Generally speaking, people are usually pretty curious about chess, especially if they’ve never played. It’s got this kind of “aura” of being a game for brilliant minds (not really).

Talking about myself, I started playing chess driven by curiosity back in 2015. Nothing too serious back then, I just wanted to learn this “next level” game which I didn’t know anything about. I kept playing all along , at least few games per week, not because I had whatever goals but I find it funny and instructive at the same time.
In the end it’s an 8×8 board where you go head-to-head with someone else. 64 squares, endless possibilities, and every move counts — one slip and your chances can drop to zero. And when it’s over, win or lose, you’ve got to face yourself.

Before moving on, I’d like to share a part of a  video that I highly recommend watching which will help us in the second half of the article.
I know that the interviewee is a controversial figure but let’s just focus on the part we need.

In the following video  Hikaru Nakamura  reacts to an interview about chess and life-skills. 
Chess and skills: from 4:15 to 6:00
Chess and self-accountability: from 6:00 to 7:00

As Hikaru pointed out, one of the biggest misconceptions is assuming that chess and intelligence are directly connected. While chess offers plenty of benefits, being skilled at it doesn’t necessarily mean someone is inherently more intelligent.

“But all the top rated players in the world also demonstrate to actually have an higher IQ or to be above the average when it comes to logical tests and this kind of stuff”.
Well, correlation and causation aren’t really the same thing….. Thus , just because a small subset of top players scores higher doesn’t mean they represent the “norm” (thank you Gaussian distribution) for everyone else, and there could be many individuals who perform just as well but don’t have those elevated scores. It’s easy to fall into confirmation bias when we start attributing success to a specific factor without considering the full range of contributing elements.

Moving on, while digging through the web and reading some articles related to the topic, I found that recent studies suggest that chess seems to help kids develop skills that carry over into other areas of life. Indeed, those who played chess as children seem to have a boost in cognitive skills. There aren’t official data or any kind of benchmark but I will link here some useful articles If you want to deep dive the argument:

https://www.wisconsinscholasticchess.org/why-chess-for-kids/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/crosswords/children-chess-lessons-zoom.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13140772
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-20/study-finds-chess-helps-children-take-calculated-risks/13198194

In conclusion , what is the overall takeaway of this article?

1.We can all agree that chess is a great hobby. It doesn’t take much time, you can easily play at home, and as mentioned before, it offers plenty of benefits.

2.Playing chess isn’t about being smart. It offers many benefits, but it won’t make you the next Steve Jobs just because you’re better than the average.

3.In my opinion, when you’re just starting out, you should simply enjoy the game for what it is , without chasing tips, tricky moves, or the best openings just to win right away.
Learn how the pieces move, study the game naturally, and let your brain do the rest. You’ll probably lose a lot at first, but you’ll develop a strong mindset, not driven by patterns or shortcuts, but by your own power, strategy, and intuition.

That’s it for this article. I hope you enjoyed it,
I’m always down for a game so if you wish contact me!

Thank you,
Enrico