How many calories does an average tournament player burn per game?

Any ideas? I thought this might be something interesting, especially since chess players seem to be more fit... or maybe not.

I heard GothamChess saying something about that, not the average but the extreme. Something like 40 pounds. Sounds way too crazy to be true tho.

It's estimated that players in major tournaments can burn anywhere from 200 to 600 calories per game or even more.

chess player fitness might not be ascribed to the amount of calories burned while playing chess, but the activities outside of the game. Many top players are in great physical shape, not because of the amount of time the spend sitting down, but because they spend a lot of time exercising. Exercising the body is a proven way to increase mental health and well being, which would naturally help a player play better. It also offsets the amount of time sitting.

Over the five months that it took to complete the 1984 World Chess Championship in Moscow (between chess legend Garry Kasparov and then champion Anatoly Karpov), Karpov reportedly lost over 22 pounds. Despite both players' protests, the championship was called off due their physical conditions. It is, so far, the only World Chess Championship to end without a result.

The chess transformation, however, wasn’t isolated to that one tournament. The six-game championship in 2004 left Rustam Kasimdzhanov 17 pounds lighter. And in 2018, one company tracking the heart rate of grandmaster Mikhail Antipov concluded that he had burned 560 calories in just two hours. Sitting still. Playing chess. (An average-sized person would need two hours on a treadmill to break 500.)

so, checkmated0001, you are wrong, it's the chess itself that burns calories, not "outside activities"

There was a claim recently (few years ago maybe) that said a classical tournament game could burn 2000 calories. Something like that. I'll see if I can find the source of that info.

@Basketstorm Oh, so sitting on your computer 24/7 is a great thing to do. Just to let you know, karpov lost a ton of pounds cause he spent the entire day studying instead of eating

Another study by Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, claims that a chess player can burn 6,000 calories in a single day while playing in a tournament. To put things into context, an average person generally consumes 2,000 calories in a single day.Aug 28, 2023.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports.ndtv.com/chess/how-many-calories-do-chess-players-burn-in-a-day-study-reveals-staggering-number-4333583/amp/1

There are others studies/articles that say similar stuff but others can look it up.

chess & fitness r related

Good source. It does also say that grandmasters do outside activities and exercise, so maybe it's a combination of the two.

What about average tournament players?

What about average player?