Sure, playing chess needs intelligence, dedication, and good chess players are smarter than an average person. But it’s waaaay exaggerated in movies. I’m a math researcher, and in any movie, my department will be full of chess geniuses. But in reality, only about 10% of them even play chess.
Paul Morphy, chess genius and sometimes described as best in the world in the mid-1800s:
“The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”
Why play chess with Moriarty when you can just bash him in the head with a chessboard?
People need to stop putting chess on a pedestal. Its a game. General intelligence has no bearing. Its a specific skillset you can hone by practice and research, just like any other game.
Would be hilarious if Hollywood moved away from chess to show someone being smart and instead showed them yelling at teammates in League of Legends.
It is a super deep game for how simple it is, i think that’s the “genius” part. But remembering openings in chess and their names doesn’t make you a genius, it makes you a genius in chess.
It’s that to be good you have to think several moves ahead. Being able to predict and plan out you and the opponents next 5 moves takes intelligence.
Almost anything where memorization is the primary skill is going to be dominated by people with specific interest, rather than general high intelligence (certainly doesn’t exclude it, but it’s just statistics). Gotta look for something frequently requiring novel problem solving and adaption to filter for high probability of high general intelligence.
Then there’s also a lot of games requiring very narrow intellectual ability. Being able to parse a specific ruleset, or doing a specific kind of math fast, without needing to be able to handle anything novel. You’ll certainly find some “interesting individuals” around those kinds of games.
Gotta look for something frequently requiring novel problem solving and adaption to filter for high probability of high general intelligence.
So, to riff off another commenter - league of legends 😅
Boy is it a toxic and frustrating game but I will give it credit where it’s due, you have to make good tactical decisions in not a lot of time.
I’m sure overwatch et al. work as well.
If you’re going to give a “MOBA” as an example, at least go for Dota 2, then. Having played both, LoL is quite one-dimensional and rather repetitive. Of course, you don’t have to be smart or skillful to play either, but top Dota 2 players/pros are really something else.
I play Pokémon Unite a lot. Very wide variation in abilities and skillsets
Being able to parse a specific ruleset, or doing a specific kind of math fast
Oh man, I would love competitive tabletop games, where the goal isn’t to min/max your build, but to min/max your build after being given a brand new system and 45 minutes to read the rules.
Lol, I can relate. My friends are always surprised how good I am at a game when I’m playing for the first time (mostly card games, and board games). But I quickly get bored, so never get to be actually good at any of those.
Same with language. I can pick up a little bit of any language fairly quickly, but to actually learn it, I basically need to be forced e.g. live in a place where most people don’t speak anything else.
Based on the number of comments in this thread, apparently this is a common misconception. Memorization is not the primary skill of chess. Knowledge of chess principles and common ideas, strategies, and tactics and the ability to synthesize those ideas with elements of the current position are the primary skill of chess. In fact, novel problem solving is very fundamental to the game.
Opening theory prep ultimately makes up a pretty small part of the game (though it is more pronounced at top levels of play). The primary purpose of studying openings is not to just memorize a bunch of lines (though having lines prepped is helpful), but to understand the common thematic elements that arise from said openings and common middlegame positions and ideas.
Exactly, Chess is Mario Kart.
Anyone can learn how to play Chess. Anyone can learn how to play Mario Kart.
You slap a controller in someone’s hand tell them “A” is go and they can play Mario Kart. Sure they have to learn the track, where to collect power ups, where the shortcuts are, and eventually they have to learn about and master drifting.
But being a genius in Mario Kart doesn’t make you a genius. No heist movie ever said, “And this genius over here? They scored first place in 200cc Special Cup.”
I want a version of chess where if you’re down enough material, you have the opportunity to take out half your opponent’s pieces
I think anarchy chess allows for such rulings.
I used to play Atomic Chess a lot, it could also be a good modification along the same lines.
I also think it’s a generational thing.
Back then, since chess was associated with intelligence, a lot of academic types tried to play it and get good at it.
I would say once we had computers, there was another much more practical thing you could get good at.
But seriously, chess sets used to be part of the house decor.
Being skilled at a game has little bearing on your intelligence beyond maybe “above average”. Intelligence is often best reflected in learning speed.
ITT: I don’t play chess. I don’t like chess. Friend play chess, he dumb, I am smart. I agree. You hear of Rubik’s cube?
Your skill at chess is indeed very good at predicting one thing: your chess rating. I have been playing every day for almost 2 years and I take lessons, but I started as an adult after finishing my PhD in actual rocket science and supervising a research lab in that area for 10 years. Consequently, I will never be as good as the 10 year olds playing with coaching since they were 6. I have met exactly one good player through my connections to that lab in 17 years. So here are some perspectives on chess if you played in high school or you “learned how to play in 30 mins and think it’s boring”:
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It’s a game with layers. The first layer is knowing how the pieces move, the second layer is memorizing openings, and the third layer is some basic knowledge of tactics (I.e., forks, skewers, pins, removing the defense, etc etc) and THEN you learn the game. Most people never learn the game unless you went out of your way to do so.
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For reason 1, “good at chess” is a hugely subjective statement. You knew a few people who can beat all your friends? Cool. I was that guy and it took me MONTHS to get to what the chess world calls “intermediate”: 1200-1400 ELO. Your friend is probably rated 700 to 750. You have probably never met more than a handful of good chess players in your life unless you were in a university club or better.
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You do not have to be typically smart to be good at chess, but it doesn’t hurt. Top GMs are sometimes impressively smart or impressively… Uh… susceptible to misinformation cough Kramnik cough. But what they CAN do is master the shit out of board positions, visualization, and prediction.
Case in point, Hikaru Nakamura, arguably world #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WsEQuoOz-c&t=490
Or you can watch him play blindfolded chess against actual good players, or speedrun 1 minute games winning hundreds in a row while talking about his pineapple shirt. He’s alternatingly pretty entertaining and kind of annoying to listen to.
If you are that kind of smart, the visualization and memory kind, yeah you’re probably going to also be a good chess player. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of traceability that I’ve seen research on.
All that said, this thread is absolutely annoying to see the whole world show up and talk out of their asses about it.
/end rant
Edit:
More Hikaru craziness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhDYSNbPs_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXDol9GqK64
Completely agree. Just a bunch of people who clearly don’t play the game and know nothing about it talking out of their asses.
IMO you can’t have a serious opinion about the game without having actually played it competitively. If you’re just somebody that’s casually played a couple games with friends and family, your opinion about the game isn’t really relevant.
“show me your non-provisional rating and then we can talk”. Yeah I agree. But then this is the internet and everyone is an expert at being an expert lol
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[odd topic?]
This is from an essay about writers. The author said that you see a lot of architects in movies because it’s a fast and easy way to convey that someone is ‘artistic’ and a bit of a dreamer. It doesn’t matter that real life architects are much more about engineering that artistry; it works for a character.
The same thing with chess, it’s a fast and easy way to present a ‘smart’ character.
Architects or advertising executives. Sometimes lead male is one and lead female is the other.
I think it was one of the writers on Cracked that opined it’s because those are the only jobs screenwriters partially understand. They’re people who pitch ideas to customers, kind of like screenwriters do with scripts. So you get a lot of main characters that have a weirdly large amount of down time, a looming deadline to present an idea for an ad campaign or building to your boss and the three executives your boss is kissing up to. Is it the moment of triumph for our main character, has our main character had a change of heart that he can’t run a greenwashing campaign for ExxonMobile anymore because hippy dippy love interest got to him, and now his previous life is going to fall apart and he’s going to start over as a shop owner in a small town or something…
I’ve noticed that a lot of the women in rom-coms are bakers.
Then you’ve got the Hallmark movie they’ve remade 90,000 times now, where the women are usually some kind of lawyer or executive or something, who travels to a small town likely where she was raised for some contrived reason only to find what she really needs: Some stuffed flannel with designer stubble.
I want that in the next satire. A business card with
Angelina Jolie
Some kind of executive
Or lawyer
on it
I think my top favorite business card simply said
John Doe
Legitimate Businessman
I remember a sign from The Simpsons.
Legitimate Italian Businessmen’s Club.
Also from that episode “It’s an Italian American Mexican stand-off!”
That’s because playing chess doesn’t make you smart it just makes you better at playing chess
Good chess players, though, exhibit some common traits which are shared with “smart people”: the ability to think in abstract terms, and a good memory.
Your success at chess is often based on how far in advance you can plan a game at any point on the board, greatly supplemented by your ability to remember entire games of famous matches. These skills are frequently exhibited by people considered smart. However, as you and OP point out, you have to play, practice, and memorize to get good; merely knowing the rules and being smart doesn’t get you there.
Disclaimer: not calling myself smart or anything.
I always found chess boring, for some reason. Like, not because it is too complex, but because it isn’t complex enough, in a way. As an example, the first time I tried my hand at Medieval II: Total War, I fell in love with all things strategy.
I still can’t do chess, though… It’s like my mind goes to its happy place halfway through a match and I start making moves just to progress the game and be done with it. Gimme a 4X game, and I’d need reminders to pee every 12 hours.
Yeah I always laugh when movies or TV portrait a character being good at strategy by depicting them being good at chess. Those two have zero relation. Total war on the other hand, get good at that and you’re cracked at strategy
In my teenage years I really tried to master it well. I score relatively high in chess.com and lichess but I share your sentiment. If you are a chess master it doesnt mean you are super smart it means you are super good at chess.
Science confirms this in a way. Prof Andrew Huberman has a podcast episode about games in general and their effect the brain development and the takeaways:
- Games can help the brain development according to publications because of the different experiences that you will never have irl
- The positive impact was only noticed when you play a variety of games under different setups and not when you master a single game and play it a lot
Well there is not a lot of action going on in a chess game and you are a lot of patience, I guess that makes it feel boring for you.
Honestly, I don’t think the action’s the problem, I enjoyed creating interlinked databases with tens of thousands of entries in Spreadsheets. I think it’s strictly to do with the complexity itself, I need more. I like the concept of every piece having a specific move set, I’d just need more of them. And add more complexity to them, but at that point may as well just play grand scale combat games, like 40k.
Edit: plus, to be honest, this lack of complexity doesn’t even let me properly enjoy a victory. Maybe it has some fetishistic tinges at this point, but a protracted victory is so much sweeter, make me feel like I pulled my brain through high intensity training for a couple of hours. Either that, or something which can start acting as a reflex, like backgammon.
I dont play a lot of chess and I’m bad at it but I recommend playing chess puzzles or timed chess. If it helps, just think of it as a mini skermish on one area of the “map”.
While there is competitive chess, I think the advantage it has over most things is that many people know how to play and that most of the time its a casual background game. Like you aren’t trying to win, you are trying to not lose.
When someone is playing at a house party, it’s so much fun to make wierd faces after they played a move or so.
One of the daftest people I ever met managed to beat 3 of us at once at chess. Would routinely kick my ass every time and it wasn’t even close.
The kind of person who absolutely would have injected bleach to cure covid.
So… disclaimer first! I have played chess but only a year or so; I got into chess during the pandemic and had a peak ELO of ~1600+ on chess.com and 1900+ on Lichess; probably translates to a classical ELO of ~1200 (competition is tough in classical…). Obviously I’m not remotely a good player, but I can hold my ground. I also had to do a neuropsych evaluation recently for mental health reasons, so I spent the last month of my free time looking into research of intelligence (g factor, IQ tests, the disturbing history, etc…) for my own curiosity. So I might have a bit of knowledge on this… but:
For the most part chess is its own unique skills and is unrelated to “smartness”. Nevertheless, I think chess might be related to probably just one or two specific narrow fields of intelligence. Being good at chess requires one to be knowledgeable of various chess openings (memorization, working memory), extremely strong pattern recognition (Magnus Carlsen is really good at this; AlphaZero was literally all pattern recognition due to the way it works), and being able to see 5, 10, or even 15 steps ahead and consider all the rational options (again, working memory)
I just took the WAIS-V test two weeks ago for my psych eval, and they do indeed test for working memory and pattern recognition in specific sub-tasks. However the difference is… IQ tests are never meant to be practiced as they measure a type of “potential” if you may, but chess is all about what you actually play on the board. Sure maybe if ppl were literally just given the rules and had no prior exposure then a smarter person might spot a forced checkmate faster, but ppl do pratice for the game… In fact, the advice people used to give to get better at chess is… to do more puzzles
Sooo… methinks an intelligent person might have a slight edge training themselves to do the above, but there is probably otherwise very little association. After a certain point intelligence itself probably has no influence on chess performance whatsoever, and realistically it’s more about “grit”, or how much time/effort someone puts into the game
Aaand… case in point. Apparently Kasparov went through a 3-day intensive intelligence test, but had a really “spiky” profile that is more commonly seen in neurodivergent individuals; scored really high on some categories and abysmally low on others. I saw this random Reddit post which says that Carlsen scored 115(+1SD) on AGCT (a fairly quick and accurate online test), which is not low but not impressive by any means either. Nakamura allegedly got 102 on Mensa Norway’s trial test, which is not as accurate as AGCT but should be fairly good too; 102 is like dead-average
Same with rubiks cube
Some of the smartest people I know do the cube
Guess I’ll start with the same disclaimer: I don’t think I’m too smart for chess or anything.
I always thought chess is kinda boring. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun enough as a novice. It’s probably also fun for people who mastered it, I’m not denying that.
However, for everything inbetween, it’s mostly about memorizing stuff. You just learn hundreds of openings and how to counter them. From what I’ve seen, a lot of intermediate players fall apart once they go off-script. It takes years until you’re good enough to strategize properly on your own, like a novice would, without some going “That’s the ‘double helix chin twister’” and beating you.
It’s kinda like the problem multiplayer games often have for me. There’s a set meta and you either learn it or lose. To experiment yourself successfully, you have to invest a massive amount of time. Experimenting myself is the fun part. I’m don’t want to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours before I get to have fun.
I largely don’t agree with this, I played chess (Battle Chess) as a kid, I wasnt the best at chess but I had fun. I hadn’t played it in over 15+ years.
My coworker plays chess on a regular basis, against other players and against the computer at 1,700. He knows quite a few strategies that I never bothered to ask what they entailed, which is a part of your point, but I just play off of the moves I see on the board, I don’t know any technical moves or strategies other than checkmate the king, castling, and en passant.
I literally wing it every time and my opponent is always thinking about future moves to try and destroy me. Our matches include blunders and typically end up with only a couple pieces left on the board. Its such a fun experience when it’s played without expectation and you’re relying on pure personal strategy in real time.
I’ve won twice In a row now. Its usually back and forth
Can confirm, my brothers are both very good at chess. One is smart, the other is dumb as rocks
I consider myself reasonably intelligent but I also have ADHD so … I completely suck at chess.
I don’t have the patience to learn how to play chess well. I don’t think more than one move ahead. My favourite game is Catan.
