Greatest Sports Geniuses — Ranked by IQ
3,548
Sports Geniuses
At the highest level, athletic genius and intellectual genius converge. These champions proved it.
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This page ranks the 25 best known. The library holds 3,548 sports biographies.
Browse all 3,548 →Total Sports Geniuses
3,548
Highest IQ
190
Average IQ
180
#1 Genius
Garry
Top 15 Sports Geniuses by IQ
Ranked by estimated IQ score, based on historical records and psychometric research.
| # | Name | IQ | Born | Known For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | Bruce Lee | 137 | 1940 | US |
| 1 | Garry Kasparov | 190 | 1963 | Being the top chess player from 1984 until 2005 |
| 2 | Judit Polgár | 170 | 1976 | Being the strongest female chess player of all time. |
| 3 | Ivan Turgenev | None | 1818 | A Sportsman's Sketches Home of the Gentry Fathers and Sons A Month in the Country |
| 4 | Samuel Reshevsky | None | 1911 | Eight-time winner of the US Chess Championship |
| 5 | Bobby Fischer | None | 1943 | Being the World Chess Champion |
| 6 | Ruslan Ponomariov | None | 1983 | Being the FIDE World Chess Champion from 2002 to 2004 |
| 7 | Bu Xiangzhi | None | 1985 | Becoming a chess grandmaster in 1999 |
| 8 | Magnus Carlsen | None | 1990 | Being the current World Chess Champion, World Rapid Chess Champion, and World Blitz Chess Champion. |
| 9 | Yuriy Kuzubov | None | 1990 | Chess Grandmaster |
| 10 | Yu Yangyi | None | 1994 | Chinese chess grandmaster |
| 11 | Daniil Dubov | None | 1996 | Being a chess Grandmaster at the age of 14. |
| 12 | Richárd Rapport | None | 1996 | Hungarian Chess Champion in 2017. |
| 13 | Nihal Sarin | None | 2004 | Being a Chess Prodigy |
| 14 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | None | 2004 | Chess Prodigy |
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