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Comment by jackconsidine | Hacker News Reader

Grandmasters apparently lose 6000 calories during classical chess games [0]. That's a few marathons worth of calories.

[0] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste...

This myth is complete nonsense, I'm not sure how people still share it. The author provides no evidence and simply made some sensationalists estimates based on heart rate and blood pressure during games.

Hacker News always has crazy takes when it comes to anything diet related. It's always strange.

I totally agree: it's completely preposterous that they're burning 6kcal sitting still regardless of how much they're thinking. People don't seem to realize how hard it is to burn that many calories when moving. That is advanced athlete levels of caloric burn. Does this caloric burn similarly apply while they're "training", or just at tournaments? Do they need to put down Olympic level meals every day just to sustain?

What about other people who's job is thinking? Are mathematicians also forced to devote a significant part of their day just to ensuring can chew through 6000 calories worth of food? Or is there something about board movements that consumes extra calories? L shape? 3 calories. Straight line: one calories. If we could pin down which type of thought burned 100x more calories, we'd be onto something powerful here.

> Hacker News always has crazy takes when it comes to anything diet related. It's always strange.

HN has crazy takes on everything not within the very narrow sphere of tech expertise that is common to everyone on this board.

You notice it for diet-related things since you are a (relative) expert on that topic.

But it's also the case for anything economic, political, scientific, or sports or hobby related, and so on.

I don’t agree. I’m better versed in politics than most and HN comes across as naive about it, but not crazy.

Nutrition seems a whole new ballgame. I’m going to speculate it’s because we know pretty much nothing about nutrition, and to hackers that’s unacceptable. We like to know the rules so we can hack them. But in nutrition no one even knows the rules, maybe the rules are different for different types of people, and that’s deeply unsatisfying.

Actually, it is not HN, but generally nutrition is one of the most bullshitted topics in the world. Everyone has their perspective completely conjured up from thin air.

I don't trust any of these from any person:

  Nutrition
  Financial Advice
  Audiophile Advice
  Home therapy

>Hacker News always has crazy takes when it comes to anything diet related.

HN comment sections are useful only when it comes to tech/business/programming subjects now, and even then the noise to info ratio is getting quite high. Turns out in the 21st century intelligence and knowledge no longer span across subjects as universally as the 18th century.

If my estimates are correct, 6000 calories is approximately the energy it takes for a 75kg person to vertically climb 34km.

After reading Behave, I hold Sapolsky in high regard. Even if he provides weak evidence for the claim, the grandmaster in the article loses 15 pounds- or a whopping 11% of his body weight- on average during a 10 day tournament which is striking.

Still not burning 6000 calories.

> In our study, we found calorie expenditure during chess competition (156.8 ± 65 kcal) and during running exercise (282.9 ± 82.7 kcal) were significantly different from each other, simply due to the overload effect of skeletal muscles during exercise.

https://journals.lsu.lt/baltic-journal-of-sport-health/artic...

This study found that energy expenditure when playing chess was ~2.3x higher than when resting.

And these are just amateur players. Maybe it's not 6000 calories but it is a significant increase over the base rate.

This can simply happen because of a change in eating and drinking habits during a 10 day tournament.

That's a 5200 calorie deficit per day.

So no, not really. At least not without significant dehydration.

I'm more skeptical of the weight loss claim itself.

Well, up to 8lbs could be water weight. If you have excess calories, your body will retain water. If you disrupt that excess you'll rapidly lose 8 to 10 lbs. Weight loss often has great results in week one, then levels off, so a portion of this could be attributed to eating less and increased stress during a tournament.

8lbs if you're already severely overweight or loaded on carbs, maybe. These guys don't exactly look like they are doing either of that. To put it in a different perspective, that amount of weight loss beats out strict waterfasting at the same weight. You can't get much more strict than straight-up dehydrating (because we all know dehydrating yourself prior to a mental exercise is a great idea) or doing rigorous exercise outside of that.

And no, chess is not rigorous exercise. If it was, the room would be too hot for them to wear suits and tuxedos. Those burned cals have to go somewhere. For the unconvinced, try jogging or lifting 2000 calories worth in a suit at room temperature or slightly above without taking it off.

I bet food poisoning would do it. Because, like you said, they aren't burning those calories - 6,000 calories in a single chess game would leave them in a giant pool of sweat.

Dehydration isn't about water, its about electrolytes.

And 4 lbs could be series of bowel movements

I can "lose" 10+lbs in 24-48 hours just by fasting, more if dehydrated.

Of course, defecation must not be confused with burning body mass.

This take seems overly skeptical to me. Regardless of truth of the 6,000 calorie claim, that kind of weight loss is extreme in such a short amount of time.

To the contrary, you're being underly skeptical. This is a huge claim to base of a sample size of one guy at one event.

To state the obvious that I hope doesn't need to be said to this audience: a sample size of one tells us exactly nothing. What's saying this one guy one time didn't have a nasty stomach bug?

A crazy claim like this requires some kind of study not just one guy's story.

Doesn't stress come into play here too?

not unless there is such a change, and it has to be significant to loose such weight. what does happen though is an increase in mental strain as the tournament progresses.

I think people are conflating "weight" with "fat". It's very believable to me that they lost 15lbs in 10 days, some fat, probably mostly water.

I know my weight can fluctuate as much as 10lbs in a day depending on how much I've been sweating, eating, drinking, exercising over the course of the day.

It could be attributed to stress, perspiration and change in water intake behaviour. In other words water weight.

4kg of water, 0.5kg of glycogen, 2kg of debris in bowels. The rest is what they really lost.

I'm sure they are burning more calories, but I doubt it's 6000.

No one who understands how much 6,000 calories is could make this claim.

That would mean they need to eat 8,000 calories a day for a normal 2000 calorie diet. That's like Michael Phelps level. That's like: leave the tournament, go back to your hotel and eat 7-8 medium dominos entire pizzas in a sitting. I hope I don't need to explain that this is not what chess masters are doing.

The article claims that breathing rate TRIPLES during chess tournaments. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then there is something pretty intense going on. If I tripled my breathing rate for an extended time period I'd probably pass out or something.

6000 calories seems absurd. But having played chess tournaments I have lost a bit weight during them despite eating generous amounts of bacon, eggs, hash browns etc at the hotel breakfast, then more crappy fast food in the evening, with mostly sleeping and relaxing in between. So I feel like there must be something to it. Although 6000 kcal in one game is ridiculous, even factoring in nervously pacing the playing hall when it's not my move.

6000 calories, about 4 pizzas, or couple of marathons.

But it may not be because of a more intense brain activity : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31130717

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