Does Playing Chess Increase IQ? What the Research Shows

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Chess: The Ultimate Brain Game?

Chess has long been associated with high intelligence in popular culture. Chess prodigies are portrayed as intellectual superstars. Chess clubs are promoted in schools with the claim that playing will make children smarter. But does the evidence actually support the idea that chess training increases IQ?

The answer is nuanced: chess training shows some cognitive benefits, particularly in certain domains, but the evidence for general IQ gains is weaker than enthusiasts claim.

What Chess Demands Cognitively

Chess is genuinely cognitively demanding. Expert-level chess play requires:

• Pattern recognition — grandmasters recognise approximately 50,000+ positional patterns stored in long-term memory
• Working memory — calculating multiple move sequences simultaneously requires holding many positions in mind
• Spatial reasoning — visualising piece movements and board positions
• Planning and executive function — thinking several moves ahead, evaluating contingencies
• Inhibitory control — suppressing impulsive moves in favour of calculated ones
• Attention — sustained concentration over extended games

The Research: Does Chess Make You Smarter?

The most comprehensive review of chess and cognitive skills, a 2016 meta-analysis by Sala and Gobet covering 24 studies and over 2,000 participants, found moderate positive effects of chess training on:

• Mathematical ability and numerical reasoning
• Reading comprehension
• Academic performance overall

However, the quality of the underlying studies was often low, and the effect sizes were substantially smaller in higher-quality studies. A 2017 randomised controlled trial by the same researchers found no evidence that chess training improved maths or reading performance compared to control activities — raising questions about whether earlier positive results reflected publication bias or poor study design.

The Transfer Problem

Like brain training apps, chess faces the "transfer problem": does learning to play chess better make you better at thinking in general, or just better at chess? The evidence for far transfer — improvement that generalises to unrelated cognitive tasks — is weak. Chess expertise appears to be highly domain-specific: grandmasters are not generally better at non-chess problem-solving than non-players of equivalent IQ.

The key exception may be in children: some evidence suggests that chess training during primary school ages shows more generalised cognitive benefits than adult training, possibly because the brain is more plastic and the executive function skills being trained are still in development.

IQ and Chess: Which Way Does the Arrow Point?

High-level chess performance requires high fluid intelligence. Studies of elite chess players find their IQ scores are on average significantly above population norms. However, this relationship runs primarily from IQ to chess skill, not the reverse — intelligence helps you become a better chess player, but becoming a better chess player does not necessarily make you more intelligent in general.

This is the reverse of the causal story chess advocates often tell. The high IQ of grandmasters reflects the cognitive demands of reaching expert level, not the IQ-boosting effects of the game itself.

What Chess Does Offer

Even if the IQ-boosting evidence is modest, chess provides genuine value:

• A genuinely engaging, competitive activity that exercises multiple cognitive skills simultaneously
• Sportsmanship, patience, and delayed gratification — losing well is a critical skill
• A social activity that spans age, culture, and language barriers
• An intellectually stimulating hobby that may contribute to cognitive reserve over the lifespan