We study the impact of external advice on the relative performance of chess
players. We asked players in chess tournaments to evaluate positions in past games
and allowed them to revise their evaluation after observing the answers of a higher
or a lower-ability adviser. Although high-quality advice has the potential to serve
as a “great equalizer,” reducing the difference between higher- and lower-ability
players, it did not happen in our experiment. One reason is that lower-ability
players tend to pay a higher premium by sticking to their initial evaluation rather
than following high-quality advice.