Is a high IQ necessary to be a poker pro

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Certainly Sklansky has to be fairly high up on the list. He's a pioneer thinker in terms of many facets of poker, and he has managed to write several books that were accessible. I've gotten the impression he does a fair bit of computer simulation and calculation to verify different scenarios as well. Ferguson is probably doing the same and is probably on the list.

That said, "intelligence" is a fluid concept. You can have someone who scores a 130 on their Stanford-Binet, and another who scores 160, and still have the 130 with an advantage in all sorts of purely intellectual pursuits, because some people excel at different sorts of things - inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization and manipulation, language skills, and so forth. Personally, I'd think that inductive reasoning, pattern recognition, and deductive reasoning were skills most critical in terms of thinking to poker success, grain of salt and all.

[MicroBob]

I was the top chess-player at my H.S. (even though I'm not really very good).

I wasn't even close to being the smartest person at my H.S.

I don't even think I was in the upper 50% in intelligence amongst my 5 or 6 chess teammates. I actually may have been dead last.
(we had some really smart guys on our chess team...I just happened to be better at chess than all the geniuses for whatever reason)

[silversurfer]

[ QUOTE ]
I was the top chess-player at my H.S. (even though I'm not really very good).

I wasn't even close to being the smartest person at my H.S.

I don't even think I was in the upper 50% in intelligence amongst my 5 or 6 chess teammates. I actually may have been dead last.
(we had some really smart guys on our chess team...I just happened to be better at chess than all the geniuses for whatever reason)

[/ QUOTE ]

Same here, MicroBob. I was the best chess player in mine as well (I would guess I had a rating of 1700-1800, then again, there were only 10 or so who played on a regular basis out of 700), but finished in the middle of my class. Then again, I was (and still am) pretty damned lazy (the guy who posted about drifting into his job unshaven made me chuckle).

Keep in mind as well: there are also varying types of intellect (can't remember the guy who wrote about this, you can easily find him on Wikipedia), so someone who might excel at pattern recognition (and thus do well at poker) might have trouble spelling their middle name.

[MicroBob]

Yes, I generally agree with this.

I'm not basing my opinion that my high-school friends are smarter than me based on any standardized test scores or grades...just my general impression of them.

Obviously I can be smarter at them in some area or another...but I'm just talking about my general feeling of overall intelligence.


For example, I can read what Ed Miller or David Sklansky have to say (not just about poker either) and know that, on the whole, they are both smarter than me. I have no shame in admitting that...they are both really freaking intelligent guys.
I'm somewhat intelligent, but I know that overall I'm not as intelligent as those guys.
Same for these guys from high-school whom I am referring to.
REALLY freaking smart (but at least I could kick their ass at chess).