Chess and Intelligence

From Psychology Today, a piece entitled "Chess: Not All About Logic?":

Chess is not necessarily a game reserved for people with IQ scores on par with Einstein. In fact, chess strategy may rely more heavily on spatial processing than on logic and computational skills. Researchers at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of novice players during a match and found a flurry of activity in the parietal and occipital lobes, areas not associated with general intelligence.

"It's not what we were expecting," says Sheng He, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology.

Ugly Chart sums up the study nicely:

Researchers have discovered that bad chess players are not necessarily intelligent...