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.

#NameIQBornKnown 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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