secondlaw writes:
would the ability to play chess well be learned, based on intelligence level, or what potentially?
You can learn to play chess well, but unless you're a savant it will take time and you'll probably never be very good. Rent the movie
Searching for Bobby Fisher (the actor who plays the father now stars in the current TV hit
Joan of Arcadia) and you'll see that the best chess players exhibit a gift for the game at a very young age. There's probably a variety of opinions about this, but my own is that an intelligent adult learning the game for the first time and willing to work long and hard could achieve a USCF rating in the 1800-2000 range within five years. The "work long and hard" part translates as "is completely obsessed by chess and does almost nothing but all the time."
You can see the advantages of being a savant.
The hardest part of chess for most non-savants without eidetic memories is learning the openings. It is easiest for novices to play white because they can select the opening. A novice playing black can easily find himself in well known (but not to him) traps. When I first started I used the Caro-kahn defense as black because it often put my white opponent in unfamiliar territory, but I had a lot of trouble with d4 openings.
--Percy