Chess pros burn a Michael Phelpsian 6k calories per game | Hacker News Reader

Chess pros burn a Michael Phelpsian 6k calories per game

melmagazine.com

6 pointspatagonia9 comments

I would need to see some more numbers on this. 6,000 calories is nearly 2 pounds of fat, and it's an incredible amount of energy. The person would be soaking wet from the energy expended, or they would have to chill the chess rooms.

The central number here seems to be entirely anecdotal and very unbelievable.

Looks like 132 per hour is what the research actually says. The actual paper is pay walled, but this describes it:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-septembe...

Another fun quote:

> The 1984 World Chess Championship was called off after five months with both competitors — Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov — experiencing exhaustion. Karpov was reported to have lost close to 20 lbs.

Per game? This seems ... not possible. Wouldn't the players require huge amounts of food while not playing? I have been at a competition hosted on a hotel conference floor, and there were zero feasts to be seen.

Makes me wonder about debugging in a time crunch. Or intensely learning a new framework. Any of those situations where the world disappears and you come out of it hours later.

Lol there's a very straightforward way to verify this since that kind of physical exertion produces reciprocal changes in the body. So are there any chess pros that have the physique of Phelps? Hmm

Burning calories isn’t what leads to muscular physique, looking at any marathon runner is proof of that.

you're taking my words very literally. my point is simple: compare a chess grandmaster's physique with anyone else's that burns 6000 calories a day

Yeah maybe. I don’t really know what you mean then, Because there isn’t really a “typical” physique for people that burn insane amounts of calories per day. Power lifters and marathon runners both regularly burn calories in high ranges like that yet their physiques are totally different.

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