How IQ does or doesn't correlate to Go skill

I do not mean any disrespect or to critically criticize your curiosity of the subject. I guess what I am getting at is that this exercise in comparing players requires that you have a system for measuring them accurately. Given how vast intelligence tests are (when considering serious efforts to done by serious experts), it first seems that you need to figure out what kind of intelligence you are trying to rate. Giving 500 players a test when you are uncertain of exactly what part of human intelligence the test is trying to measure (like the test you shared above) will not tell you much.

What are you really learning from that? How can you look at the scores and feel that they represent anything concrete or definitive? I enjoy a good spreadsheet. Data can be and often is very sexy. But it doesn’t represent reality in any way if the foundations of how it is measuring things are not strong. If you were to state that 3,000 Go players were compared with a crappy IQ test, nobody would care.

And if you left the “crappy” part out of that description and people were interested, but later found out it was a crappy test, they would feel deceived and likely be upset. Because the test only matters if you understand what you are testing and why. How you test and what you are trying to measure are two very important questions. That paper I linked to you shows that Go professionals are exceptional in several different areas. You could use a paper like that, and I’ve heard on /r/baduk, where I heard about the test I linked above, that there are others doing such work in Japan.

An actual Go IQ test should measure Go skills & aptitude, and perhaps knowledge. Things like (spit-balling, list not meant to be complete):

  1. pattern recognition

  2. proficiency of combating certain situations on the board

  3. capacity of reading (distance and quality)

  4. speed of solving different tsumego
     
    And if you wanted to approach the academia side of things (learned knowledge vs individual capability with the game itself)

  5. Go vocabulary

  6. Go history (past, present, of the game’s evolution and important matches)

  7. Different Go ruleset knowledge

  8. Showcasing understanding of specific topics like PSK vs SSK vs Natural SSK vs Fixed Ko

  9. Ability to build examples of rare shapes (triple ko, moonlight ko, molasses ko)

At least then every Go player would become equalized. Go players looking at this test would understand how they all compared to one another and why each score was relevant. I too wouldn’t mind seeing Go players compared, but if you don’t take the comparing seriously, then what are the results of your testing really even reflecting?

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