Would you be willing to take an IQ test, to show me what cognitive profile you need for chess?

EDIT: This post has been modified after its original posting to fix missing links and pictures because I just now got the ability to post links and images.

When it comes to brainy smarty pursuits, I'd like to know before I get into it if I'd actually enjoy it or do well at it. Before I decide to major in a STEM field, ideally I'd like to know what it takes to succeed in that field. And so it follows with chess. So what I'd like to do is test a bunch of chess players.

There's this coding community called Codeforces, and someone there decided to ask a bunch of coders on Codeforces to take this online IQ test and share their results for a scatter plot. The goal was to see if there was a correlation between IQ (as measured by the test) and "Codeforces rating."

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/91237

Now to be fair, the test is not an accurate measure of IQ. And this experiment didn't even find much correlation between IQ (as measured by the test) and Codeforces rating. But I think it does show a correlation between IQ (as measured by the test) and people on Codeforces. A correlation between "scoring well on the Memory sections of the test" and people on Codeforces. A correlation between "scoring well on the Spatial sections of the test" and people on Codeforces.

I wanna do the same for Chess.com. And maybe there won't be much correlation between IQ and Chess.com rating. I'm not really worried about that. What I'm banking on is that there'll be a correlation between IQ and people on Chess.com. When I punch in all these scores, I'm pretty sure there's gonna be a big cluster where most Chess.com players' IQs are.

So here's what I would ask you to do: First, take the Open-Source Psychometrics Project's Full Scale IQ Test.

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/FSIQ/

It'll give you a Memory IQ, a Verbal IQ, a Spatial IQ, and a general IQ that's basically an average of all 3. Write those scores down, and send them to me in a private message. The Codeforces experiment lasted about a week, but I'm not sure when I'll stop accepting submissions. I hope to get at least 100 different people.

And remember: You can remain anonymous. Also remember, it doesn't really matter how high your IQ is. You're already good at chess, this is just a question of what IQ it takes to be as good at chess as you are.

Oh, I'm not allowed to post external links?

Unless I'm missing something, it seems that your data is going to be very skewed by the self-selection sample bias of "the kind of people who will voluntarily take a series of IQ tests on a web forum", and thus cannot be extrapolated to the general chess-playing population (of Chess.com, let alone the wider world).

It also sounds like your data is going to be very susceptible to corruption by virtue of relying on self-reporting something to which the kind of person who takes a series of IQ tests probably attaches a degree of ego-carrying weight.

Unless you have planned a way to work around those limitations and get meaningful data?

I suppose, if you take into account those limitations, you might want to adjust your hypothesis to consider them, e.g. "people in this hyperspecific self-selecting population sample with higher/lower chess ratings will self-report a higher/lower IQ".

Then, it becomes less about the IQ, and more about the self-reportings. Which might not be exactly what you want, but I'm not sure there's a way (without a lot of effort and/or funding) to get what you want.

AnastasiaStyles wrote:

Unless I'm missing something, it seems that your data is going to be very skewed by the self-selection sample bias of "the kind of people who will voluntarily take a series of IQ tests on a web forum", and thus cannot be extrapolated to the general chess-playing population (of Chess.com, let alone the wider world).

It also sounds like your data is going to be very susceptible to corruption by virtue of relying on self-reporting something to which the kind of person who takes a series of IQ tests probably attaches a degree of ego-carrying weight.

Unless you have planned a way to work around those limitations and get meaningful data?

I suppose, if you take into account those limitations, you might want to adjust your hypothesis to consider them, . "people in this hyperspecific self-selecting population sample with higher/lower chess ratings will self-report a higher/lower IQ".

Then, it becomes less about the IQ, and more about the self-reportings. Which might not be exactly what you want, but I'm not sure there's a way (without a lot of effort and/or funding) to get what you want.

Like the guy on Codeforces, I trust that the people of Chess.com wouldn't lie.

And I trust that all people on Chess.com are equally confident. Everyone here is at least sharper than the average person because everyone here took enough interest in chess to commit to it.

EDIT: Why did my response originally look like it was part of AnastasiaStyles's post? I had to put in lines to keep things separate.

I'm new to this forum, how do I know if someone's sent me a private message?

yall just do

We just know that someone sent a message?

I got 116 total, 133 memory, 103 verbal, and 116 spatial.

My rapid peak was 1768 chesscom, and I average 1400 blitz, and 1300 bullet, with the peak for blitz and bullet being in the 1600s. My USCF elo is 1524 blitz. This test is very well put together, good job!

I hope to see other people complete this, I’m curious of the results. If you need any other info please let me know.

I think I have a normal qi and I can have good chess games. I can speak English, Spanish and Portuguese. And I'm 14 years old. I think you don't gotta have a great qi to play chess.

"Now to be fair, the test is not an accurate measure of IQ. " Hello? That's what you said.

Keegan wrote:

I got 116 total, 133 memory, 103 verbal, and 116 spatial.

My rapid peak was 1768 chesscom, and I average 1400 blitz, and 1300 bullet, with the peak for blitz and bullet being in the 1600s. My USCF elo is 1524 blitz. This test is very well put together, good job!

I hope to see other people complete this, I’m curious of the results. If you need any other info please let me know.

That'll do it, thanks for playing.

EDIT: Why don't my quotes look right? What am I doing wrong?

Nepotamy wrote:

"Now to be fair, the test is not an accurate measure of IQ. " Hello? That's what you said.

Yes, that's what I said. This test won't tell you your actual IQ, but whatever score it gives you, I'm interested in seeing how it correlates with your Chess rating/your peers.

You know um_nik, right? He got a 167 IQ SD 24 on an online IQ test. I and a lot of others outscored him on that test. Would you say I'm better at competitive programming?

You know um_nik, right? He got a 167 IQ SD 24 on an online IQ test. I and a lot of others outscored him on that test. Would you say I'm better at competitive programming?

I don't know um_nik. Did he score 167 on the Open-Source Psychometrics Project one?

Because if so, then you might be better at competitive programming if you tried.

I-Will-Have-My-Justice posted some very objectionable material in this thread, so objectionable that apparently you can't even describe it without violating the Chess.com terms of service.

Strangely though, there's no category in the Report menu for objectionable content. The closest thing is "spamming." But what was so objectionable about that content wasn't that it was "spammy."

Report that guy

tonyskyer wrote: Dr-Autist-Octavius wrote:

I-Will-Have-My-Justice posted some very objectionable material in this thread, so objectionable that apparently you can't even describe it without violating the Chess.com terms of service.

Strangely though, there's no category in the Report menu for objectionable content. The closest thing is "spamming." But what was so objectionable about that content wasn't that it was "spammy."

Report that guy

How come your quotes look proper but mine don't?

There's a quote button on the top right hand corner of a comment (Next to the upvote and downvote with the number in the middle), press that and you can get a proper quote.

There's a quote button on the top right hand corner of a comment (Next to the upvote and downvote with the number in the middle), press that and you can get a proper quote.

That's what I'm doing, but it's not working.

What's more, I can't post images/screenshots. Even though I-Will-Have-My-Justice can and they joined just today.

Maybe you need to play more games of chess before you have access to stuff like quotes and screenshots? I've played none.

Playing chess, does that contribute to the pool and affect everyone's ELO scores? Because I'm trying not to do that.