5 ms·

> 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

> 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 Citation, please. I see him making this claim in a number of articles and talks, but am having trouble finding an experiment verifying this.

lancesells 7y ago
I would love to see this as well. That's more than 2x what most people burn running a marathon. Hard to believe but would be really interesting if that's true.
- jfengel 7y ago
  I also doubt it, though it's not quite 2x. The number they cite is "6,000 calories a day", which presumably includes the ~2,000 calories one burns just by staying alive. A marathon runner burns ~2,600 calories on the race itself, totalling ~4,600 for the day. So it's about 1.3x rather than 2x. The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".
  - zaroth 7y ago
    If you’re going to be pedantic, you subtract out the baseline, and the alleged caloric burn from chess would be 1.5x the measured burn from running a marathon. But in any case it still astounds me the human body can run that far on just 2,000 calories (2.3kWh).
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Something you learn when you're trying to lose a lot of weight: The human body is disgustingly energy efficient.
      - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
        It's more about how light the body is than how efficient it is. Consider: the Tesla Model 3 has a range of 350 km, and a battery capacity of 50 kWh. That's a little more than seven km per kWh. So, less efficient than the human body, right? Well don't forget that its curb weight is 1,611 kg. If we assume that the marathoning human weighs 100 kg, then the Tesla weighs 16x as much. So to compare the performance pound for pound, we need to imagine the energy use of sixteen human runners (36kWh for 42km, or just a little more than 1kWh per km). Also, it would be travelling that range at a much higher velocity. Of course, its coefficient of drag is probably lower than that of sixteen human runners, but considering the humans are running at 15 km/h or so, and the Tesla would be travelling at closer to 100kmh, the velocity factor of the drag calculation would be 40x higher for the Tesla than the humans. So, even if you factor in the unfairness of having skin and hair and clothes, the humans are actually a good deal less energy efficient than the car. I just found this analysis interesting. Our machines are after all quite a bit more efficient than our bodies (for certain tasks, of course). But that doesn't detract from your point that the body is definitely more efficient than you want it to be when it comes to losing weight!
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  It's about on par with what a farm hand would burn per work day at the beginning of the 20th century (unless I'm remembering that wrong). The human brain burns a lot of calories, but I'm pretty skeptical it can manage 6000kcal on its own.
Ensorceled 7y ago
Anecdotally, I’ve run marathons and half-marathons and would compare calorie burn to a competitive MtG tourney.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Anecdotally, I don't believe that for half a second.
  - Ensorceled 7y ago
    It’s not true if you’re playing for fun. If I go to a pre-release it’s a walk in the park. When I was playing competitive MtG, it was draining and I would be eating power bars every hour or so and still lose weight.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. There is an old reddit thread [1] that calls this into question that links to a study that says the max calorie burn they found was 132 cal/hr [2]. (Don't have full access to the study so just going by the reddit comment) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2tb2/chess_burns_6000_calories_per_day_chess_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2tb2/chess_burns_... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  And if that's a total burn (hard to tell without the paper), only about 50 of that is from the activity...
EamonnMR 7y ago
This would lead to difficulties with heat dissipation.
jacques_chester 7y ago
It's a nonsensical number, comparing to measurements of Tour de France cyclists or ultramarathoners running 100kms per day, who can expect to hit that kind of figure. The highest recorded expenditure is around 11,000kcals / day. Under truly absurd conditions: manhauling sleds weighing hundreds of kilos across ice so cold that it doesn't create a lubricating layer, from 60M above sea level to 3,000M above sea level, over 10 days[0]. Show me an isotape-labelled water measurement or a CO2 measurement and maybe I'll believe it. Edit: found it. The chess study does use a CO2 measurement[1]. The maximum figure given was 2.2kcals/minute. I don't know how you get from that to 6,000-7,000kcals, however, unless people are playing 40-50 hour matches. [0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f842/ecabb86a55a1a8577fcee7a6651664a89928.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f842/ecabb86a55a1a8577fcee7... [1] 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 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23455094_The_stress...
4b11b4 7y ago
Even if this is true, you still wouldn't have any muscle mass, which is a key signal for your body to regenerate.

lancesells 7y ago

I would love to see this as well. That's more than 2x what most people burn running a marathon. Hard to believe but would be really interesting if that's true.

jfengel 7y ago
I also doubt it, though it's not quite 2x. The number they cite is "6,000 calories a day", which presumably includes the ~2,000 calories one burns just by staying alive. A marathon runner burns ~2,600 calories on the race itself, totalling ~4,600 for the day. So it's about 1.3x rather than 2x. The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".
- zaroth 7y ago
  If you’re going to be pedantic, you subtract out the baseline, and the alleged caloric burn from chess would be 1.5x the measured burn from running a marathon. But in any case it still astounds me the human body can run that far on just 2,000 calories (2.3kWh).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Something you learn when you're trying to lose a lot of weight: The human body is disgustingly energy efficient.
    - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
      It's more about how light the body is than how efficient it is. Consider: the Tesla Model 3 has a range of 350 km, and a battery capacity of 50 kWh. That's a little more than seven km per kWh. So, less efficient than the human body, right? Well don't forget that its curb weight is 1,611 kg. If we assume that the marathoning human weighs 100 kg, then the Tesla weighs 16x as much. So to compare the performance pound for pound, we need to imagine the energy use of sixteen human runners (36kWh for 42km, or just a little more than 1kWh per km). Also, it would be travelling that range at a much higher velocity. Of course, its coefficient of drag is probably lower than that of sixteen human runners, but considering the humans are running at 15 km/h or so, and the Tesla would be travelling at closer to 100kmh, the velocity factor of the drag calculation would be 40x higher for the Tesla than the humans. So, even if you factor in the unfairness of having skin and hair and clothes, the humans are actually a good deal less energy efficient than the car. I just found this analysis interesting. Our machines are after all quite a bit more efficient than our bodies (for certain tasks, of course). But that doesn't detract from your point that the body is definitely more efficient than you want it to be when it comes to losing weight!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
It's about on par with what a farm hand would burn per work day at the beginning of the 20th century (unless I'm remembering that wrong). The human brain burns a lot of calories, but I'm pretty skeptical it can manage 6000kcal on its own.

Ensorceled 7y ago

Anecdotally, I’ve run marathons and half-marathons and would compare calorie burn to a competitive MtG tourney.

oarabbus_ 7y ago
Anecdotally, I don't believe that for half a second.
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  It’s not true if you’re playing for fun. If I go to a pre-release it’s a walk in the park. When I was playing competitive MtG, it was draining and I would be eating power bars every hour or so and still lose weight.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

Thanks for pointing this out. There is an old reddit thread [1] that calls this into question that links to a study that says the max calorie burn they found was 132 cal/hr [2]. (Don't have full access to the study so just going by the reddit comment) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2tb2/chess_burns_6000_calories_per_day_chess_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2tb2/chess_burns_... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876

Dylan16807 7y ago
And if that's a total burn (hard to tell without the paper), only about 50 of that is from the activity...

EamonnMR 7y ago

This would lead to difficulties with heat dissipation.

jacques_chester 7y ago

It's a nonsensical number, comparing to measurements of Tour de France cyclists or ultramarathoners running 100kms per day, who can expect to hit that kind of figure. The highest recorded expenditure is around 11,000kcals / day. Under truly absurd conditions: manhauling sleds weighing hundreds of kilos across ice so cold that it doesn't create a lubricating layer, from 60M above sea level to 3,000M above sea level, over 10 days[0]. Show me an isotape-labelled water measurement or a CO2 measurement and maybe I'll believe it. Edit: found it. The chess study does use a CO2 measurement[1]. The maximum figure given was 2.2kcals/minute. I don't know how you get from that to 6,000-7,000kcals, however, unless people are playing 40-50 hour matches. [0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f842/ecabb86a55a1a8577fcee7a6651664a89928.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f842/ecabb86a55a1a8577fcee7... [1] 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 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23455094_The_stress...

4b11b4 7y ago

Even if this is true, you still wouldn't have any muscle mass, which is a key signal for your body to regenerate.