Is chess all about Rating?

CHESS RATING IN GENERAL

Chess ratings (including ELO, lichess Rating, FIDA rating, USCF rating) are just the unit to measure a persons ability to find good moves in a game of chess. It also to pair the opponents as per their rating so that, equipotential players plays in their own rating range. This system has been followed from many years and have been tremendously successful.

DITERMINATION OF IQ OR PROGRESS

Truth to be told, no one becomes a grandmaster by playing chess for just a few months or even years, thus, new players are always low rated. Does this means that chess is barely a progress calculator than an intelligence? Perhaps, it is! some people may think it defines your intelligence, which is completely absurd as not all intelligent are gonna be higher rated and not all dumb people are lower rated, Chess Rating is the measure of how much depth of chess you are familiar with.
Just look at super grandmasters you see on streams - Magnus, Hikaru, Eric, etc., and like many others, it took then years of practice to play the chess they play today. Whereas, if we talk about IM's, FM's, CM's, they might have spent lesser time understanding, studying and learning chess.

RELATION BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND RATING

It certainly doesn't mean that there is no connection between intelligence and rating, actually there is an indirect and complex connection between both of them. The first thought is speed, person who is faster in making moves is gonna be higher rated in blitz and bullet, whereas, person with better understanding of chess will be higher rated in classical and rapid. The second aspect is accuracy, it comes from analyzing chess position for many time, by doing so one will be able to find the most accurate move out of many options (even engines are bad at this on low depth).
The third way of thinking about it is via aggression and psyche, chess is a game directly corelated to psychology, as everyone have already heard of psychological tactics used by soviet union during chess world cups in the past or the brilliant way of making opponent sweat by Mikhail Tal. The most obvious drawback of humans are the takeover of emotion, as an engine would never freak out down a queen, neither will it start flying up 6 points of material.

By summing up, I just wanna say that rating is easier to gain for intelligent individuals, but, it's definitely not impossible for everyone. I saw many people with average thinking ability gain upto 100 rating points in a time period of few days. Which is hard to be honest, but, still possible.

With love and regards,
HAVE A BEAUTIFUL DAY