Chess and Coffee

How does caffeine affect your game?

I've been a coffee drinker for about six years. I've been a regular casual chess player (mostly on chess.com) for about the same time. I never thought about how the caffeine affects my game until recently when I tried to quit. I was used to the up and down energy levels that a caffeine addiction makes you feel and the terrible crash you don't get your fix.

When I cut out coffee for over a week, after I got over the initial withdrawal symptoms, I started to win Live Chess games much more regularly. I seemed to make fewer silly blunders and went on a winning streak. Then when I started drinking coffee again two days ago I've lost almost every 10 minute game I've played, often making silly unforced errors to the point of losing a bishop or knight for no reason beyond blind positioning.

So, weirdly I think coffee/caffeine actually make my game WORSE. Perhaps it speeds up thinking but makes the brain more chaotic and more error-prone? I'm going to experiment with quitting coffee again and see what happens. I was calmer without it. Of course the placebo effect could also play a role but I thought drinking coffee again would help my game and the opposite has happened. On the other hand I'm guessing some people NEED coffee to play.

So has anyone else thought about this? How does coffee affect your game?

That's very interesting. Havent tried yet with coffee, but with clock. I lose almost everything after midnight.

When I drink alcohol I only play unrated games. Learned my lesson there... :)

no kidding, I can believe this I should try it. I always start my day with brewing the coffee and firing up the computer for some online chess (live not to be confused with the CC that chess com calls online)

anyway after I crash I seem to play worse esp endgames. I didnt know quiting might help my games even more then the caffiene rush!

In case anyone thinks I'm exaggerating here's a screenshot of my wins/losses over the last week. I have a free account so I can't go back further but check out what started to happen around April 1st when I started drinking coffee again. You can't see but before then there were about 8 straight wins. Hmm....

The real reason juniors are better at chess, much less responsibilty, haven't yet jumped on the caffiene and alchol cycle

JGambit - if you want to try it I think the key is patience. For the first couple of days after quitting you'll probably play terribly if you have the usual caffeine withdrawal symptoms like headache and brain fog. But after a week or so I was much calmer and was winning more consistently. Now I'm drinking it again and blundering left and right... ^^

Im going to go for it soon, should probably give up the drinking as well. But it helps me unwind after a stressful day of chess.

If anyone is brave enough to try no coffee for 1-2 weeks and report the effect on their game it would be interesting if you post your results here.

Science!

Hah just play the drunk games unrated or highlight those games so they don't throw off your results. ^^

Update: Just calmed down, had a cup of chamomile tea and won my next game! ^^

fleetwell.

Either you can handle coffee or you cannot? Is not going to help in 10/0 games where wears off without time to make more.

Only use coffee in bullet or longer games.

I had a similar experience when I cut by caffeine intake 6 weeks ago.

If you go read about caffeine, you will see that, when consumed in large amounts (150+ mg a day), it adversly affects your concentration and mood.

I cut back to less than 80mg a day and everything changed.

Did you know caffeine has a 1/2 life of about 8 hours. So. If you drink a coffee at 8 am. By 8pm, you still have about 25% of it in your system.

If you are a heavy caffeine drinker, then you probably still have a pretty large percentage of it in your system each morning before you have that first cup of coffee/tea.

Here is a shot of the cup I used to use for drinking tea. I drank 3 - 4 of these a day before. (for scale, that king in the background is 3.75 inches(9.5cm) tall)

By 4pm everyday, I felt like crap. I felt like I had run a friggin marathon and my back and shoulders were tense and sore all the time.

Of course tea also contains caffeine. :)

(As do many branded soft-drinks)

The key is not to slurp, it just breaks your concentration and makes you feel like a wussy.

For anyone wanting to quit, increasing your water intake really helps.

When I quit, I just filled that jug of a tea cup I had with water. It served a double purpose. 1) It helped counter many of the side-effects of quitting 2) it fulfilled the habit of drinking something all the time.

Quitting caffeine abruptly ("cold turkey") will probably cause terribly painful (dangerous?) headaches.  A gentler way is to wean oneself gradually by using caffeine pills, and gradually reducing the dosage over a period of 2 weeks.  This worked beautifully for me.

The headaches aren't dangerous. But, for sure, this technique is the most common and most gentle way to do it. And, I would imaging, the most effective.

I went cold-turkey for 10 days then went back to a much-much smaller amount. I never intended to quit all togehter; I love tea.

I'm drinking coffee again but in smaller amounts (roughly 1 cup per day) and my errors have decreased. My going theory is that too much caffeine gives you energy but makes your brain behave erratically.