This is a serious question!

Originally posted by Wilfriedva
Let us first establish what is good chess.Let's say playing at a current 2200 Elo level is considered good chess.

Ok,now I can disagree with you 🙂
To be Carlsen you need talent,a good memory and the character to do the labour.
Chess is not such a simple game.There's people who will never be any good at it,no matter how they try.
Besides,you always ...[text shortened]... d talent to be good at something.

Intelligence has nothing to do with it,that I agree with.

I like disagreement.So allow me to counter-disagree(lol).

There is no one that can't be good.

The ones that can't be good are the ones that don't try or try the wrong way.
I am assisting a teaching team in my chess club the last 8 years and I have seen that those that study chess correctly do improve.
A woman that started with us 7 years ago was at 700 FIDE rating back then.After only 2 years she was at 1800+ FIDE rating and today she is at 2109 and won a woman FM in the recent team championship.

She is 53 years old , she can't calculate many moves , she hasn't memorise any opening lines and she can't spend infinite hours in tactics training.The above game is a very good example of simple chess and how effective it can be.Every move she played(she had black) has a very simple reason.Nothing complicated(her opponent didn't resign sooner because she hoped that time trouble blunders would save her).
Quality of study defines how simple or how complicated chess is.
Study wrong and it's very complicated.
Study right and it will become significantly simpler.

Ok,for examples as this to have any value you must either prove to me this lady has zero natural talent for the game,or give 7 billion such examples.

Whatever you think is easiest and take your time 🙂

Wow, thanks guys! after reading all comments i decided to keep trying to improve! for now i'm trying to get to 1400, and then i can go from there a dream come true would be 2000 lol , hey you never know 🙂

Originally posted by tim88
Do you need to have natural talent to be good at chess?

"You don't need talent to play chess, all you need is hate and a clock."-Brian Wall USCF LM

Originally posted by Wilfriedva
Ok,for examples as this to have any value you must either prove to me this lady has zero natural talent for the game,or give 7 billion such examples.

Whatever you think is easiest and take your time 🙂

No one can say with certainty that she has or she hasn't talent.
There is no way to measure talent or detect it's existence.

We know she had 700 rating and she had spend infinite money on various DVDs and learning courses on the net.
When she started studying chess correctly her game improved dramatically.
Was it her talent?Maybe, but why didn't it help her before?

Originally posted by Roper300
No one can say with certainty that she has or she hasn't talent.
There is no way to measure talent or detect it's existence.

Yes,I know.It's like debating religion,the neverending story.

I'm not saying talent alone is enough.I'm only saying you need a bit of it to be good at something.
If no talent is needed then why aren't we all equally strong after equal study/training?
The method?Let's take your club's method.If this is the right way to study then why aren't you all playing for the world title?And how did anyone ever manage to become champion without this much needed method?

Originally posted by Wilfriedva

The method?Let's take your club's method.If this is the right way to study then why aren't you all playing for the world title?And how did anyone ever manage to become champion without this much needed method?

Your question is easily answered with an example.
200 medical students to the best medical school.
How many will become top researchers or top surgeons?
No more than 10.
Why?
Many reasons , most important , life and personality.
We lost 2 great talents(brothers) because they were swimmimg champions and eventually abandoned chess.
Some return crying after the first bad results and they abandon chess.
Some fall in love , some marry , some have other things to do.
Chess is very time consuming.To play top level chess you need to love it more than you love yourself and you also need a rich father that loves you and will pay for everything you need for many years.If you need to have an 8 hour work , better forget it.


p.s. It's not our "chess club's method".It's Dvoretsky's method.The supervising teacher , a very good IM, is Yusupov's student(who is Dvoretsky's student ,lol).

The method your club uses then,to phrase it correct 🙂

Meh,we can argue till the cows come home and nothing will change.I stand by my religion,you stand by yours.

Let's go have a drink (you're buying)
Cheers!

What Anatoly Karpov says about how he became rather good at chess is that he did not learn the rules of Chess so much, as he learned the rules of Winning.

Of course study, personality, time, effort - all contribute to your skill. But none of us here, no matter how hard we study, no matter how much time we put into it, will ever be as good as a Fischer or Kasparov - or even Grand Master or International Master. Intelligence IS an imprtant factor if you want to attain greatness. Fischer's IQ was reported to be 186. Kasparov 195. Pattern recognition, the ability to calculate, even chess intuition, are all part of that. I do not believe a person of below average intelligence can become a master no matter how hard he tried.

Originally posted by tim88
Do you need to have natural talent to be good at chess?

Or God on your side.
😏

Originally posted by tim88
Do you need to have natural talent to be good at chess?

no, to be honest in my opinion. chess is like any other activity you do in life, if you are dedicated then you will be good at it. its a skill you develop through experience of doing it.

Originally posted by woodypusher
. Fischer's IQ was reported to be 186. Kasparov 195. Pattern recognition, the ability to calculate, even chess intuition, are all part of that. I do not believe a person of below average intelligence can become a master no matter how hard he tried.

All these stories about Kasparov's and Fisher's IQ remind me the stories about Bruce Lee(mafia killed him) and King Elvis(he still lives somewhere in Bahamas islands).
I'm sorry to say that but many amateurs believe in nonsense in their try to present their favorite chess champions as Gods of Intelligence, just like Martial Arts students have created several stories about Bruce Lee that none of them is true.

Here are some facts about chess and intelligence:

" In 1894, Alfred Binet conducted one of the first psychological studies into chess. He investigated the cognitive facilities of chess masters. Binet hypothosized that chess depends upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory. He found that only chess masters were able to play chess successfully without seeing the board and intermediate players found it impossible to play a game of blindfold chess. Binet found that experience, imagination, and memories of abstract and concrete varieties were required in master chess. His work was titled: Psychologie des Grands Calculateurs et des Joueurs d'Echecs. Binet relied much on chess masters such as Alphonse Goetz (French Champion in 1914), Rosenthal, Arnous de Riviere, Janowski, and Taubenhaus.

Binet thought that playing blindfold chess would require strong powers of memory and of visualization. However, he found this was not the case. It was not that the expert blindfold player could visualize a chessboard better than the amateur. It was the opposite that was true. The good blindfold player was not dependent on the visual aspect of the game. It was the amateur who tried to picture the whole board. The strong blindfold player was using a more efficient way of storing the position in his mind.

Alfred Binet and his collegue Theodore Simon created the Binet-Simon scale in 1905. It was aimed at identifying students who could benefit from extra help in school. His assumption was that lower IQ indicated the need for more teaching, not an inate ability to learn."



And about Kasparov's IQ

"Some sources give Kasparov an IQ between 185 and 190. But one source has it listed as 135. In 1987-88, the German magazine Der Spiegel went to considerable effort and expense to find out Kasparov's IQ. Under the supervision of an international team of psychologists, Kasparov was given a large battery of tests designed to measure his memory, spatial ability, and abstract reasoning. They measured his IQ as 135 and his memory as one of the very best."


It is safe to say that chess increases IQ but high intelligence is not necessary to be Kasparov or Fisher and it is even doubtful that it helps.
Even talented players don't believe that intelligence helps in Chess.Aronian says that you don't need to be smart or have extraordinary memory , you only need to have "Chess harmony".What exactly "Chess harmony" is , I don't know , the point is that even top grandmasters are not convinced about the relation of chess and intelligence.
I have talked with a lot GMs and IMs.Some are indeed very clever but there are also some that aren't so bright and they are incapable of discussing anything outside chess.One of them is a 2600+ GM!!!

Originally posted by simonwells999
no, to be honest in my opinion. chess is like any other activity you do in life, if you are dedicated then you will be good at it. its a skill you develop through experience of doing it.

That's the most correct and smart thing said in this topic.
I couldn't say it better myself.
I totally agree.

[All these stories about Kasparov's and Fisher's IQ remind me the stories about Bruce Lee(mafia killed him) and King Elvis(he still lives somewhere in Bahamas islands).
I'm sorry to say that but many amateurs believe in nonsense in their try to present their favorite chess champions as Gods of Intelligence, just like Martial Arts students have created several stories about Bruce Lee that none of them is true.]

What you accept as truth depends on choice. Believe it or not, this 'amateur' does not believe Elvis is alive and doesn't know what killed Bruce Lee (as you obviously do).

What one accepts as true or fact depends on whether you are objective or subjective. You think only subjectively. You cannot believe someone may be more intelligent than you. We can both post links supporting our cases. You choose to believe you can become world chess champion. I believe that's nonsense. I know it's especially hard for some to accept the fact that others are vastly more intelligent than they are. That's just delusional.

Here is a link to look at for yourself. You can choose to educate yourself or you can choose to stay ignorant. I'm not so arrogant as you as to believe I am as intelligent as Kasparov or Fischer. You choose to believe they're 135 (still genius by the way) but far from extraordinary. I believe they are extraordinarily gifted. It's sad that some amateurs such as yourself cannot accept that you are not as intelligent as they. Accepting that does not mean I think they are Gods, although compared to me and you, they are super-human intellectually.

'Strong grandmasters (Elo = 2600+) are likely to have an IQ above 160.'

http://www.jlevitt.dircon.co.uk/iq.htm

Being 'good' (subjective term) at chess is attainable for a lot of people of course, but not all. Being World Champion or super grand master is out of reach for 99.99999+% of us.