> So we should determine who to give chess lessons to with chess tournaments? That seems pretty dumb.

By your logic, we could even declare grandmasters based on IQ scores alone without anyone needing to play. Clearly that misses the point of skill assessment.

History also doesn’t support the claim of potential ability all that well, in my opinion. Lewis Terman’s study tracked high-IQ children across several decades. Many of the children went on to lead ordinary lives and did not reach noteworthy achievements. However, two lower-IQ children that were excluded went on to become Nobel Prize winners. IQ alone does not seem to be a robust predictor of domain mastery.