What Makes a Master?

What makes a strong chess player? One hypothesis is that people who become chess masters have exceptional intelligence or memory, but there is little evidence to support this view. Most researchers have found minimal correlations between measures of IQ and official chess ratings. On the other hand, many chess masters appear to have a phenomenal memory. They can recall games played years ago, move by move, and when shown an unfamiliar chess position for only a few seconds, they can reproduce it virtually without error on a new board and set. The catch, however, is that this feat is only possible when they are given positions taken from actual games. When the position is random, the master does only about as well as the amateur. General intelligence and memory by themselves do not appear to distinguish great chess players from ordinary ones.

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