
Too Smart to Become the Chess World Champion? - tortilla
http://volokh.com/2010/03/17/too-smart-to-become-the-chess-world-champion/
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scotty79
Playing chess is not so much about reasoning. It's more about pattern
recognition and assessment. To play chess really well you need to have
embedded awesome heuristics in your brain that shows you what the good move
is.

I played with two people. One about same IQ as me, maybe slightly lower but
having extensive experience (at least in comparison to mine) in chess (he
played a lot as a kid, I played maybe 100 games total, never with
significantly better opponent).

Second guy I played was more intelligent then me but had almost no experience
in chess (he was incredible mathematician, transition between two lines of his
proof that he saw obvious, required whole page of my reasoning for me to be
understood, he represented my country in International Mathematical Olympics,
he got master degree one year ahead of time).

With the first guy I won exactly once. Before that I lost about 20-30 games
with him. When I played the other guy I was astonished how dumb moves he made.
I won with him effortlessly first time.

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lolcraft
I think that if you argue so, you must also admit that mathematical prowess
isn't related to intelligence (and such, that your mathematician adversary
being faster than you at symbolic logic didn't prove him or her smarter) or
you would be on contradiction.

Another discussion is IQ correlation with chess prowess or mathematics
ability. I would argue that chess and mathematics are two separated skills
which are applications of intelligence; so there's definitely a correlation
between both, but entirely determined by experience.

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scotty79
I didn't say that I thought that this mathematician was intelligent because he
was incredible with math. I just stated that he was he was more intelligent
than me (which I base on all experiences I shared with him, same as with my
"chess-master" friend). Then I just gave some additional trivia about him to
show what things he was capable of.

My personal feeling is that having high IQ can help you raise your skill in
something up to a certain point fast. After that if you are not genuinely
obsessive about this subject you flatten out. People who are more interested
than you (but are less intelligent) can catch up and surpass your skill. IQ
doesn't determine how good you can be but only how fast can you reach your
max.

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greenlblue
I'm starting to be more and more convinced that "overspecialization" is a non-
existent beast. I've never met a specialist that was unable to pick up
necessary knowledge and skills because they were too specialized. In fact
being a specialist would allow them to use analogies and metaphors from their
own discipline to get a much better understanding of new topics.

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nazgulnarsil
when you study topics deeply enough they start to converge with other topics.
at their heart a lot of subjects use similar abstractions and methodologies.

but I think chess is actually an exception. chess requires chess knowledge.

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jongraehl
Yep, that's why I'm not world-class at any one thing ... I'm just too
intelligent.

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pw0ncakes
I think the tendency to "underspecialize" is universal and not limited to the
extremely intelligent. Most people, left to their own devices, would prefer to
be a dabbler for a while, until choosing later on an area in which to
specialize. (Then, the question is: in that field, will they specialize? There
are general mathematicians who tend not to publish cutting-edge results but
know the field very well, and then there are those who identify solely as
algebraic topologists.)

However, my suspicion is that people who hyperspecialize are (and always were)
most successful in their time, while the more general-minded will be the ones
who are remembered in 100 years. Eratosthenes had the derisive nickname "beta"
because he was second-best in a lot of fields, but he's the first (as far as
we know) to have proved the round earth.

