Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Does this atlas rank groups by IQ, race or nation?
No. Pathways and evidence stay individual. Scores are browsing aids — never group biological or racial ranks.
What did de Groot find?
Masters did not always search deeper in simple measures; they saw better positions. Perception as expertise.
How much does practice explain in games?
Macnamara et al. 2014: about 26% in their games coding — minority, largest among their bands.
Were the Polgárs a proof of nurture?
László Polgár’s project produced three elite players, including Judit. It is a powerful family experiment, not a proof that any child can be world number one.
Is go the same file as chess?
Shared search and pattern; different aesthetics and institutions (Japan/Korea/China houses).
Does chess make you smarter at life?
Near transfer to similar search tasks is likelier than far transfer to every decision. “Chess in schools raises IQ” is a weaker claim.
Signs of strategic talent are cues for curiosity, not a diagnosis and not a caste stamp.
Tests measure a sample already shaped by teaching and invitation. False positives are part of the identification problem.
Early cues
- 3–6 — Rule invention — Makes fairer or harder games.
- 7–9 — Look-ahead talk — Says “if I, then they” without a lesson.
- 10–13 — Loss appetite — Wants the post-mortem.
- 14–17 — Multi-game transfer — Steals a structure from one game to another.
- Adult — Teaching a rule set — Can explain the win condition.
Tests & tasks
- Position recall — Chase–Simon sample.
- Timed decision set — Search under clock.
- Post-mortem quality — What they learned from a loss.
- IQ as chess proxy — Do not.
Environments
- A stronger opponent plus review — The zone with a name.
- Engine as teacher, not crutch — 1997 lesson.
- A club — Soviet-school sociality.
- Time controls that allow thought — Not only bullet.
False positives
- Opening-book parrot — Memory, not search.
- Rating bought by volume — Inflation without design.
- IQ-halo captain — Stereotype.
- One brilliant swindle — A sample of one.
Strategic talent: a cue is information. A label without a review date is a caste.
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