Why does playing chess consume that many calories but playing videogames, which, in theory, uses a lot of brain capacity, doesn’t?
In: Biology
Video games don’t use a lot of brain capacity. There’s not a lot of puzzle solving or complex strategy going on. In most cases, it’s “run, see, shoot, repeat”
When you play chess, you have to think. You can’t move a character or do anything that’s not thinking. For video games, even if they need thinking, most of the time you can get around just fine by “auto piloting” and just, well, playing the game. I think exception of this is strategy games, turn based, which I’d be surprised if they dont burn a lot too
Your brain is a huge calorie hog…thinking hard requires a lot of energy.
Most videogames, however, don’t actually require a lot of thinking, especially when you get good. They require a lot of *attention*, but that’s not the same thing. Practicing video games is all about establishing muscle memory and reflexes so that you *don’t* have to think hard, you just react. This is sometimes called getting into a “flow state” which is very efficient but not like the type of thinking you do in chess. There’s no such thing as a “chess reflex” beyond a few standard openings.
Why do you think that to be the case? Not doubting, just asking.
Frame challenge: playing chess does not use very many excess calories. Those that it does use, are due to high stress. Playing a high stress, fast-paced competitive videogame, e.g. StarCraft 2, DoTA, would burn the same amount of calories, plus more due to the constant physical activity.
[People have used chess as a model for studying stress responses and therefore have done a detailed metabolic analysis.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876) The key data is in table 1 (p. 347); here it is, converted to Calories/hr:
>Energy expended (Cal/hr): Before / Beginning / Middle / End
>
>———————— ———– ———– ———– ———–
>
>Mean : 91.8 / 100.2 / 91.8 / 93.0
>
>Minimum : 68.4 / 70.8 / 70.2 68.4
>
>Maximum : 120.0 / 132.0 / 120.6 / 122.4
>
These are comparable to light physical activity (desk work, etc.), and not even close to jogging (400-500 Calories/hr for someone weighing ~70 kg).
So, no, chess grandmasters do not rate that highly when it comes to caloric expenditure.
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