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Another question would be whether people with high IQs are smarter than
other people. 

Chess and other mentally taxing games are said to ward off Alzheimer's,
which is somewhat related to your topic. I would guess, though, that if
there is anyone who doesn't enjoy playing chess, but plays it anyway in
hope of becoming smarter, then it won't work for that person.

I would disagree with the idea that you need to enjoy Chess for playing it
to make you smarter. It would still be mental exercise, and like physical
exercise, which can make you stronger even when you don't enjoy it, I
think mental exercise would help make you smarter even when you don't
enjoy it. I do agree that some people could play Chess without enjoying it
and get nothing from it. When I was in high school, I played various sports
in gym class without enjoying it and got nothing out of it. This is because
I'm ill-suited for sports. When I played rugby, for example, my object was
just to stay away from everyone else. Likewise, some people might be
ill-suited for Chess. But there is one big disanalogy here. In team
sports, someone who isn't nearly as good as everyone else is not going to
get to do much and won't get much out of it. But with Chess, bad players
can play against children or weak computer programs and have some chance
of winning. The important thing I think is sticking to it. If you enjoy
it, that helps, but as long as you stick to it and try to improve your
game, playing Chess should help you get smarter. If you don't enjoy it
but stick to it long enough, then you probably will come to enjoy it.

There are many types of mental endeavors which can help people exercise
their minds, sharpen their acuity or even, enhance their intelligence
slightly-to-moderately over time.  I would not assess playing board games
as being of greater importance than many other, unrelated (or seemingly
so) ways.  However, game-playing is ideal for this purpose due to the
great number of events which can be simulated and learned from via
feedback within a brief time without risking harm to one's self or others
in any non-trivial way (unless gambling is involved).  At a cursory 
glance, people generally classify games as trivial pursuits.  Maybe so. 
Yet game theory is the most instructive branch of mathematics applicable
to areas of life generally agreed to be far more effectual and important
than mere parlor games.

Economics, business, political science, revolutionary theory, military
science, legal theory, legislation, police science, terrorist behavior,
criminal behavior, social behavior, etc can all be learned from, to some
extent, from the perspective of game theory.  Essentially, game theory
offers some valuable holistic insights with predictive, empowering or
controlling potential into many of the possible resourceful, rational
decisions and moves by governments, corporations and individuals designed
to maximize rewards and minimize losses or risks.  Of course, the
complexity intrinsic to these non-scientific subjects, which do not allow
some important variables to be isolated or treated mathematically, gives
rise to many errors and limitations.  Nonetheless, a wide range of 
seemingly-unrelated subjects which involve utilitarian behavior and its
various methods of calculation can be approached with some fruitfulness by
this mathematical science with interdisciplinary value.

The reason I do not consider chess variants trivial lies in my
marginally-tenable theory, ideal or notion that perfect game(s) truly
exist within the infinite universe of possibilities.  Moreover, I am
confident that our efforts to discover or invent perfect game(s) can and
eventually, will succeed (if they have not already).  Furthermore, I would
classify any perfect game created as a perfect model and in turn, value any
perfect model very highly instead of trivially as an educational tool which
could possibly be catalytic to rapid and/or deep human learning to the
greatest extent.  In turn, this extraordinary tool for human learning
could have an unprecedented, high positive transfer to other important
subjects of study effecting humanity which are also approachable from game
theory- the limiting factors involving levels of emergence and mental
adaptivity where crossing distinct subject matters.

I agree with Fergus, you don´t need to enjoy Chess for playing it to get
smarter, but it can help. Chess practice is a mental exercise, but at
first I disagree it is as other mental activities, the mental proccess
playing a game, with the planning, strategy and evaluation subjects
involved, can help to augment your IQ by non trivial reasons, and it is a
research subject, although other metal activities can also help to make
you 'smarter' too, depending on the 'smarter' definition, and in this
topic I am not specialist, so I don´t want to add much more in a diletant
posture. Chess is a finite game of perfect information, so there is an
optimal strategy and the result under optimal strategy exists. Very
probably, Chess is a draw, and with very lowest probability White wins,
but it is not possible, to the state-of-art, determine the result under
optimal stategy, due the combinatorics complexity. nxn Chess is NP-hard,
so, in principle, a family of games with previously undetermined board
sizes are out the scope of analysis, but 8x8 Chess has a result.
Nevertheless, the result is far from easy to be determined, due the game
complexity, and this game, as many other games here, are complex enough
for give the player a special mental exercise: plan the future under very
complex strategies and tactics, and it can be the clever on the action of
the game practice in making you smarter: in each step you need avaluate
your move and avoid commit errors, and it can be used for many situations
in the real world and life. Perhaps the mental proccess in Chess prepares
the brain for many similar situations in the real life.

Many IQ tests are suitable for a brain prepared to certain things: some
abstraction, fast responses under time pressure, asociation, sequencing, 
simple calculations or evaluations, stepping, finding little details...
Maybe Chess practice is a way for conditioning brain to these kind of
tests, and this is the reason of success. Brain can be educated and
trained for many things. It is possible that Chess and other board games
act as teachers for the brain in an indirect way, making possible best
performances in tests in which many of the common mental proccesses you
apply in a game are tested.

Chess has influence in IQ improvements, according to numerous studies,  but
I have found, finally, an interesting article, confirming my suspects:
From:

The Psychology of Chess Skill
By J. Corey Butler, PhD 

'...One hypothesis that has been around for many years is that people who
become strong chess players have exceptional intelligence and/or memory. 
This belief is quite popular with highly rated chess players, but
potentially discouraging to the general population.  Fortunately, there is
little solid evidence to support this viewpoint.  In fact, most researchers
have found minimal correlations between measures of IQ and official chess
ratings.  On the other hand, many grandmasters appear to have a phenomenal
memory.  They can recall games played years ago, move by move, and when
shown an unfamiliar chess position for only a few seconds, they can
reproduce it with very few mistakes on a new board and set.  The catch,
however, is that this feat is only possible when they are given positions
taken from actual games.  When the position is random, the master does
only about as well as the amateur.  General intelligence and memory by
themselves do not appear to distinguish great chess players from ordinary
ones...'

You don´t need to become a master for being smarter. Practice Chess,
that´s all.

Post data: search, find and read the article. It is really interesting.

There is a lot of material available on the Internet. Correlation between
ELO and IQ was suposed >.6 in the past, but it is only close to .2 in some
studies. Regression curves shows prediction of modest higher IQ when higher
ELO, if you pass from 1200 to 2500 ELO, the predicted difference in IQ is
in average only 10 points, but due the little correlation, it is possible
that the average difference in IQ is not the cause of the average
difference in ELO, but perhaps, at least partially, the consequence. Chess
practice has demonstrated IQ improvements in childs and young people, but
with age, the effect seems to follow a decreasing tendence, as the ELO and
IQ measures, which tend to decrease with age. After some reading I am
concluding that Chess and board games practice can be good for making you
moderately smarter, at least below the IQ measures appretiation, and it is
independent of the mastering degree you reach, but don´t expect miraculous
transformatios if you are not a boy.

There are objective ways of evaluating an individual's performance, but
there is always going to be the problem of motivating the individual to
perform.  (Lack of motivation is not the same thing as lack of
intelligence; if the subject simply doesn't like the examiner, that
could
spell loads of problems for testing his intelligence.)  I remember once,
way back around 1974 or so, a psychologist was working on his doctoral
dissertation (or whatever it was), and he wished to test people on how
well they could capture all the squares on a chessboard with a single
Knight starting out at a corner.  He loaded up the whole chessboard with
pawns, and put a Knight in a corner.  He even offered each subject (under
18???) five dollars 'to see if they could capture every pawn on the
board.'  Yes, we all know there are tons of ways you can 'Tour the
Chessboard' with a Knight, but he was also timing his subjects to see
how
fast they could do it.  I think I was something like 16 years old at the
time, and five dollars simply didn't motivate me that much.  (Boy was
that psychologist mad when I went around the back of the Skittles Room -
that's a room set aside for playing chess in between rounds - showing
all
the kids a way to do it, before he could get to them, and test them...) 
The moral to the lesson, is that money does not always motivate people to
do things, or perform 'logically' on a test.  I wasn't interested in
the five dollars so much as sharing a secret that was supposed to be
worth
money, and which was bound to annoy those who thought the money was
really
the end-all, be-all of motivation.

Now, if you test two people on two different chessboards, timing them
both
on how fast they could tour the chessboard with a knight, that might have
been more interesting.

I suspect the estimation of Pres. George W. Bush's IQ at 91 is about
right, perhaps even generous.  Sometimes, IQ tests yield results which
make one wonder how reasonable or accurate they may be.  After all, there
seems to be no way to definitively test IQ tests and educational
psychology is far from an exact science.

The estimated IQ of 135 for Gary Kasparov is some proof or indication of
how inaccurate IQ tests can be.  Anyone who has memorized an opening book
of appr. 2 million positions for chess, can reliably identify and execute
any part of it quickly and errorlessly and moreover, is one of the very
best in the world at intelligently improvising mid-game and endgame
scenarios without it is extremely intelligent (if not a genius or
borderline).

Yes, some highly intelligent people do not find standardized tests or
normal conversations (thru which their IQ can be revealed) especially
interesting, engaging or motivating.

Chess columnist Larry Evans runs a repeat column, with slight revisions
each time, relating the subject to intelligence. How good a chess player
can you be? Take your IQ from some standard test, or average of a few
such
trials. Add 100 for provisional number, to which multiply by ten. That is
your hypothetical FIDE rating, if you apply yourself to the (64-square
western) chess that we all know. Example: IQ 120 becomes 220 that turns
into 2200 Elo Rating(potential). An 'Ultranet' member(beyond Mensa and
Mega) at IQ 165 becomes 2650 Fide, presuming the person is willing to
work
at the game an hour a day, tournaments, and all the rest. It is easy to
see
why only a dozen or so get rated over 2700. Probably someone can
out-perform for specific tasks, like Lavieri suggests, IQ but not by more
than 10 or 15%.

Although it has been argued that chess can help in students performance, it
seems that experimental studies are not absolutely coincident, but
moderated effects on IQ are ever mentioned, I have read an Australian
article in which the hypothesis: Does the playing of chess lead to
improved scholastic achievement? is tested using discriminative linear
models, without a clear conclusion (Murray Thompson, Flinders University),
but one of the interpretations of the results was the following:
'...Of particular interest in this study is the value G20. This
represents the effect of playing competitive chess on the performance
abilities of the students. It suggests that, taking into account the
effects of IQ and grade level, students who play chess competitively, are
performing at a level of 0.056 of a logit better than others, when
controlling for the other variables of grade and IQ. This is approximately
equivalent to one quarter of a year's work. However this result was not
found to be significant. One possible explanation of this lack of
significance is that the playing of chess has contributed to the
individual student IQ and so the benefits of playing chess have been
absorbed into the IQ variable.' 
It seems the truth that Chess practice can contribute in making a young
smarter, but I agree that the IQ increment can be no more that 10-15% in
the best of cases. You can´t force the determined human nature too much.

When I was IQ-tested in 8th grade, I was told my IQ was 133. I was in the
honors class of a highly competitive academic highschool for 4 years; was
in the math and chess clubs, and was one of the 3 best players in the
school, all of us about equal. The school was test-happy. I got 75 report
cards in those 4 years, and 12 sets of final exams. I read amazing
amounts
of science fiction and science, played a range of card and board games
from
easy to hard, from Stratego to complex military simulations. I took the
SATs and more tests to get into college. Got a full scholarship to a
minor
ivy league type of school. Once, in the dean's office, I got a chance to
peek at my record and saw my IQ score - 157. The college was trying to
burnish its image then, so it pushed the students hard. I got 1400 on my
college boards, and when I took the GREs, expected a drop of about 100
points in my score, which our guidance people told us was the average
change in scores. Instead, I got 1540 on the GREs, an increase of 140,
and
was the first one done on 2 of the 3 math sections in the morning - 3
because they were testing a new math section. I suspect any IQ test I
took
then would have shown over 160. I just don't know what it means, how
valid
IQ test are in general, and specifically, how accurate my tests were, as
I
was basically educated in how to take a very wide range of tests ever
since 5th grade, when Sister Mary Ruler II gave us 3 quizzes a day, a
science, history and geography test every single day of 5th grade. I
believe I got very good at taking tests, and chess, and some other rather
non-marketable skills, mostly in gaming-related fields. Is an IQ increase
of at least about 20% minimum, 18% demonstrated between IQ tests 1 & 2
alone, with a reasonable expectation of a 165 as a fairly conservative
final figure, something everyone could do? This 165 figure would be an
increase of 25%, not unreasonable from the figures given. How much of the
increase is 'real', and how much is 'just training', or does the
training merely contribute to a 'real' increase in IQ? Chess here is
just part of a kind of mental development program. Its significance may
be
its presence as an indicator of a developing mind, or, at best, an
indication that the mind is enjoying some, at least, of its development,
and thus may be expected to try to actively continue such development.
Finally, what does it mean to be able to increase an IQ score by about 30
points, say? What sort of changes would be expected in people who do this?

Almost surely, IQ can be increased moderately with correct mental
activities, as you can increase muscles by constant exercises, but I doubt
you can transform an imbecile to a genius, nature has its limitations.
Chess, variants and othe mental game can help a lot, perhaps much more
than many people think, because it is not only a mental exercise which
uses many cerebral actions that define intelligence, it is recreational
and, by this reason, many times there is predisposition to the activity,
and there is a special kind of happiness in what you are doing. Many
aspects of intelligence are actively estimulated by some games, so it is
not a surprise for me the experimental results.