Chess Grandmasters Burn 6,000 Calories on Tournament Days

I saw Joe Rogan talk about this on a podcast clip (Chess Grandmasters Burn 6,000 Calories on Tournament Days)

"Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day."

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess

"I wonder if chess is the pinnacle of things that you do that aren't physical, in terms of movement, but are incredibly calorie taxing. I mean, that's a very complex game." - Joe Rogan

I wear an activity watch and it tracks my HR. While they aren't the most accurate, I burned 3,800 calories, according to its tracking, during a one-day, four round tournament recently. Another tourney this past fall, with a longer time control, I burned 4,275 calories on day one of the tourney (3 rounds G/120).

It certainly is possible.

At the end of an OTB tournament day I'm unusually hungry for fatty greasy foods. I usually like to get KFC, chicken with a lot of mash potatoes. High calorie meal. I never eat (or crave) KFC otherwise

I've heard pro go players lose weight during long tournaments too.

Although in my case part of it may be I avoid heavy meals during tournaments because I don't want to fall asleep after lunch, so I eat things I never usually eat like a salad and an apple for lunch... so maybe that can be part of it.

Just glancing at my archive, I've lost 7 of my last 50 games here. Apparently I don't "lose regularly" to anyone lol.

(and 3 of those losses were when I was giving simuls)

Well, I have, but it's strange you use that as a point of attack since there's no indication one way or another... unlike Colby who bragged about going to some Australian open that it turns out didn't exist (Pfren called him out on it).

Pretty sure we're at least 1 to 1 on that front 

Sapolsky is a bit of a wild character and is not very well respected or liked among others in his field of animal behaviour. His main target is the unsuspecting public, so he makes up increasingly bizarre claims to try to get attention. 

At the end of the day you're sitting playing chess. I have no doubt that it it will use up more energy than if you were passively watching a tv show, but claims as if it's like some tiring sporting activity is flat out laughable. 

Wow.  That's a lot of calories, Martin!!  I hope you won!

I won some money in that one-day tourney and only lost to the winner of the event (though I probably should have lost at least one of my other games).

I didn't say anything about confidence.

I think activity watches assumes your intencity of running by your hearth rate. İf you are stressed or hyped during playing blitz, it assumes that you are running. I dont want to belive a stanford prof. Robert soppolsky can make a such obvious error as well but probably he did it as well. The stress of running and stress of playin chess isn'tthe same. The best apporoach should be asking a gm. Maybe hikaru could verify but I dont think you can burn 6000 kcal just playing chess. 

 -just a random med student

if thats true then its one way to lose weight

6000 cal a day is similar to a cyclist competing in the tour de france. Male RDA is 2500. I dont see that a tournement requires above average physical exertion so the implication is that the brain requires the extra 3500! No way. Someone is cooking the books. These sorts of studies are notoriously difficult to do well. If the researchers relied on self reporting by food diaries then the results are unlikely to be reliable and calorie consumption is not necessarily a good indicator of energy requirements. Just look at the global obesity problem.

The study probably found that chess players consumed 6000 calories and this has been reported as having burned 6000 calories.

Read the article and discussed with wife who is a dietitian with 25 years experience. She scoffed and pointed out that addrenelin will increase both heart rate and breathing rate. The researchers should have accounted for it. It is bad science.

Oxidative reactions that we do to produce atp isn't  hundred percent effective. Where is the excess heat go. As far as I see gm's doesn't sweat like marathone runners.

I agree

This is obviously incorrect because the oxygen intake and dissipation of that much heat would be very noticeable.

6000 kCal is enough to run 60 miles.

For the actual energy consumption for Chess players try this instead: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23455094_The_stress_of_chess_players_as_a_model_to_study_the_effects_of_psychological_stimuli_on_physiological_responses_An_example_of_substrate_oxidation_and_heart_rate_variability_in_man

It's not likely to burn 6,000 exclusively from playing chess but that in conjunction with the BMR, which is likely a baseline of around 2,000 calories for many male GMs doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility for a long time control and total daily burn

My highest estimated burn was just over 5,200 for a full day with a short 4 mile run and 3 long games in a tournament.

1800 for your BMR and 400 for your run leaves 3000 for Chess. For that estimate to be valid the oxygen intake and heat dissipation would be the same for your Chess as running a further 30 miles instead. Since it's unlikely that you were breathing heavily and sweating a lot then we have to conclude that the method used for estimating your calorie usage is invalid in this case. The paper which I linked reports a more plausible 50 kcal/h from playing Chess.

Mental strain activates the body's stress response, increasing heart rate and energy expenditure.