Short answer: Garry Kasparov's reported IQ is 135. In 1987 the German magazine Der Spiegel arranged a three-day battery in which he scored 135 on an intelligence test compiled by psychologist Hans Jürgen Eysenck and 123 on Raven's Progressive Matrices. He scored below average on one measure of inventiveness. Kasparov has not published any other result.
At a glance
| Reported IQ | 135 on an Eysenck-compiled test; 123 on Raven's Progressive Matrices (Der Spiegel, 1987) |
|---|---|
| Basis of the figure | Three-day battery arranged by Der Spiegel: three intelligence tests plus memory, chess and other cognitive tasks |
| Weakest area | Below average on inventiveness in Adolf Otto Jäger's Berlin Intelligence Structure Model |
| Born | 13 April 1963, Baku, Azerbaijan SSR |
| Field | Chess; author; pro-democracy campaigner |
| Signature achievement | World champion at 22 (1985); world No. 1 for 255 months |
| Peak rating | 2851 (July 1999), the record until 2013 |
| Comparable minds | Magnus Carlsen, Bobby Fischer |
The Der Spiegel battery of 1987
In 1987, the year he defended his title against Anatoly Karpov in Seville, the 24-year-old world champion sat for three days of psychological testing organized by Der Spiegel. The battery combined three intelligence tests with tests of memory, chess skill and other cognitive tasks. The magazine published the findings in its issue 52 of 1987.
One intelligence test was compiled for the occasion by Hans Jürgen Eysenck, the German-born British psychologist. Kasparov scored 135 on it. On Raven's Progressive Matrices, the standard nonverbal reasoning test, he scored 123. On the third instrument, built on the Berlin Intelligence Structure Model of Adolf Otto Jäger, he fell below average in the area of inventiveness, the capacity to generate many ideas quickly.
That makes Kasparov a rarity. Most champions have no test on record at all. His full profile, titles and career timeline are on his Garry Kasparov genius page.
What 135 and 123 mean
On the modern deviation scale, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, a score of 135 sits 2.3 deviations above average. That is roughly the 99th percentile, about 1 person in 100. A 123 lands near the 94th percentile, about 1 in 16. The first clears Mensa's bar of 130; the second does not. Our pages on IQ 135 and IQ 123 give the full breakdown.
The 12-point gap is not a contradiction. Eysenck's compilation and Raven's matrices sample different skills, and any single score carries a margin of roughly five points either way. Without the norm tables behind each conversion, the two results cannot be merged into one master number. The honest summary is a range: very high, well short of the extreme tail.
Figures of 185 to 190 also circulate on chess forums and fan sites. They name no test, no date and no examiner. The only documented numbers are the two from 1987.
A lopsided profile, not a flat genius
The below-average inventiveness result is the most instructive finding of the Spiegel study. The greatest player of his era was not a universal outlier. His strengths were specific, and chess rewarded them.
Research agrees. A 2016 meta-analysis in the journal Intelligence, led by Alexander Burgoyne with Fernand Gobet and David Hambrick among the authors, pooled the evidence on cognitive ability and chess skill. The average correlation was 0.24: real, but modest. Fluid reasoning mattered more for young players (0.32) than for adults (0.11), and more for unranked players (0.32) than for rated ones (0.14). Numerical ability predicted chess skill better (0.35) than verbal (0.19) or visuospatial ability (0.13).
At the elite level, then, raw test scores separate players poorly. Something else, most plausibly knowledge built over years of study, accounts for more of the difference. Our guide to chess grandmaster IQ sets out the wider evidence.
The record on the board
The chess record is the stronger evidence. Kasparov beat Karpov 13–11 in their 1985 match, which ended on 9 November, and became world champion at 22, the youngest in history at the time. He held the title until 2000. He was ranked world No. 1 for 255 months between 1984 and 2005.
- July 1999: reached a rating of 2851, a record that stood until Magnus Carlsen passed it in 2013.
- February 1996: beat IBM's Deep Blue 4–2 in Philadelphia.
- May 1997: lost the rematch in New York, 3½–2½, the first defeat of a reigning world champion by a computer under tournament conditions.
- 10 March 2005: retired from regular competitive chess.
He has since written How Life Imitates Chess (2007) and Deep Thinking (2017), the latter a first-hand account of the Deep Blue matches and the rise of machine intelligence.
Kasparov, Carlsen and Fischer compared
Of the three most discussed champions, only Kasparov has a documented test. Magnus Carlsen has never published a score. Bobby Fischer's famous figure in the 180s rests on a secondhand school anecdote.
| Player | IQ evidence | Peak rating |
|---|---|---|
| Garry Kasparov | 135 and 123, reported 1987 | 2851 (1999) |
| Magnus Carlsen | No published score | 2882 (2014) |
| Bobby Fischer | Unsourced anecdote | 2785 (1972) |
Ratings from different decades are not a clean comparison, because the pool of players changed. Head-to-head profiles are on Kasparov vs Carlsen and Fischer vs Kasparov.
What 135 leaves out
About one person in a hundred scores 135. There has been one Kasparov. The number says nothing about preparation, work rate or competitive nerve, the qualities his five world championship matches against Karpov tested hardest.
It also misses the second career. Kasparov co-founded the United Civil Front, joined The Other Russia coalition, left Russia in June 2013, and founded the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017. Those choices reflect conviction and risk tolerance, qualities no reasoning test samples.
For where 135 falls against historical estimates for scientists and writers, see our complete list of genius IQ scores.
How we assessed this
We took the scores from the German-language summary of the Der Spiegel study and checked the chess record against FIDE-based histories. We cite the Burgoyne meta-analysis for the research on chess and intelligence. We did not use forum figures above 180, because none identifies a test. Kasparov is living; we report only what was published, attribute it, and draw no inference about any other score.
Frequently asked questions
What is Garry Kasparov's IQ?
Kasparov's reported IQ is 135. The score comes from a test compiled by psychologist Hans Jürgen Eysenck for a three-day battery organized by Der Spiegel in 1987. On Raven's Progressive Matrices in the same battery he scored 123. Higher figures seen online cite no test.
Is Garry Kasparov a genius?
By his field's hardest measures, yes. He became world champion at 22, held the No. 1 ranking for 255 months and set a rating record of 2851 that lasted until 2013. His reported IQ of 135 is high but not extreme, which shows how much elite chess depends on knowledge and preparation.
Who has a higher IQ, Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen?
No one can say. Kasparov has two reported scores from 1987, 135 and 123. Carlsen has never published an IQ result, so there is nothing to compare. On the board, Carlsen's peak rating of 2882 exceeds Kasparov's 2851, though ratings from different eras are not strictly comparable.
Who tested Kasparov's IQ?
The German news magazine Der Spiegel organized the testing in 1987. It used three intelligence instruments: a test compiled by Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and a test built on Adolf Otto Jäger's Berlin Intelligence Structure Model. The battery also included memory and chess tasks.
Does a high IQ make a great chess player?
It helps, mostly early. A 2016 meta-analysis in Intelligence found an average correlation of 0.24 between cognitive ability and chess skill, falling to 0.14 for fluid reasoning among rated players. Kasparov's own profile, strong but uneven, fits that picture.
Sources
- Garri Kimowitsch Kasparow (German Wikipedia) — 1987 Der Spiegel test battery: Eysenck test 135, Raven 123, below average on inventiveness
- Garry Kasparov (Wikipedia) — Birth, 255 months at No. 1, 2851 peak, Deep Blue matches, retirement, books, political activity
- World Chess Championship 1985 (Wikipedia) — 13–11 result, 9 November 1985, youngest champion at 22
- World Chess Championship 1987 (Wikipedia) — Seville title defense in the year of the tests
- List of FIDE chess world number ones (Wikipedia) — Peak ratings of Kasparov, Carlsen and Fischer
- Burgoyne et al., The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill, Intelligence 59 (2016) — Meta-analytic correlations between chess skill and cognitive abilities
- Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov (Wikipedia) — 1996 and 1997 match results and their significance
- Chess and IQ (Chess.com) — Shows the unsourced 185–190 figures circulating alongside the 1987 result
Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.
