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Comment by astrofinch | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that being the best chess player in the world is evidence that Kasparov is very intelligent--any more than being the best poker player, the best piano player, or even the best marketer. Chess is a learned skill just like any of those.

Put another way, looking at all of the world's very most intelligent people, the fraction that care enough about chess to become the world champion if they had the aptitude is very slim.

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Point of fact: chess is learned but only to a point, probably around 2100-2150 ELO. That is the limit of what most people can accomplish with a lot of study and hard work.

Pushing beyond that and into the Super to Elite Grandmaster range (2550-2800) requires extraordinary levels of memory, concentration, calculation and pattern matching. Levels that can't be instilled in someone through any amount of training. A person either possesses them or (s)he doesn't.

I lack the evidence at hand, but I'm certain I've seen it before that aptitude in those areas correlates strongly to high intelligence.

I think Kasparov disagrees with you via "...working hard is also part of an individual’s talent"

though to be fair he follows with

"I think working hard is sometimes just as important to having a talent."

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6069

You don't only lack the evidence, I think it is fair to say that the evidence contradicts your opinion. If you look at people like Judit Polgár, it seems like practice is far more important than any kind of intrinsic ability.

I'm willing to bet that the best Poker player, piano player and marketer are all very intelligent people. Being the best at something often takes both extreme intelligence and a lot of practice.

Actually, computers have demonstrated over and over that you don't have to be intelligent to be a brilliant chess player.

They've demonstrated that a brilliant chess player doesn't have to be intelligent. They haven't demonstrated that a brilliant human chess player doesn't have to be intelligent.

However, computers have not demonstrated brilliant chess play is possible without intelligence, unless the programmers of deep blue were not intelligent.

Kasparov has a 190 IQ.

There are lots of people who play chess as much as Kasparov does. Few of them are even remotely near him in skill.

I'm not sure who the best poker player would be, but I've met most of the names that would be thrown out there if you asked the top people, and they're all scary smart. Piano playing is a different type of intelligence than poker or chess, but whoever the world's best piano player is I promise you has a lot of that type.

Or maybe the IQ test that gave him a score of 190 had puzzles that engaged the same part of the mind as chess does, which he's already trained.

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