Chess and life expectancy

By Prof. Christian Hesse and Frederic Friedel

In our final section (there are links to the first three parts at the bottom of the page) we will discuss how this and other factors affect the life expectancy of chess players. We asked our readers to guess whether the chess playing part of the population can expect to live longer or shorter lives, on average, than the rest of the non-chess people surrounding them. 

There are a number of positive and negative aspects that are connected to the statistical question of whether chess is healthy, overall, or not – whether chess players live longer on the average or not. Let us look at some of these factors.

One important consideration is the fact that chess players do a lot of sitting. And they are practically motionless while they do it. That in itself would seem detrimental to longevity. But we must take into account that they are not just sitting – they sit and think. It seems obvious that chess players spent more time thinking than most of the rest of the population. And that can be considered good and healthy. Extensive thinking is brain training, and that reduces the risk of dementia, which is one of the leading causes of death.

In the UK in 2022, dementia and Alzheimer's disease accounted for 78.000 deaths, while all Ischaemic heart diseases (which include heart attacks) made up only 69.000 cases.According to estimates from 2019, there were world-wide more than 55 million people aged 40 or older that lived with dementia. And there are studies that show that the risk of dementia is reduced when people occupy their brain with positive thinking. Chess is a wonderful activity to do this.

In 2022 dementia was in fact the leader [source: Alzheimer Research UK}

Another advantage of sitting motionless for hours at a time is correlating it with the same amount of time spent walking on the street, cycling, driving a car, etc. Clearly people engaged in these activities are, from a statistical point of view, in greater danger of encountering life-span shortening situations.

Now let us compare the average lengths of life of chess players to that of the general public. More specifically, we want to consider people with a relevant association to chess, be it that they are grandmasters, international masters or master, be it that they are chess coaches, chess composers, chess referees or chess officials of some sort.

With relevant association to chess, we mean that the person's chess activities are known to the degree to make it to the Wikipedia Chess necrology page when he or she dies. For the purpose of reaching an initial estimate we have focussed on the most recent date, i.e. chess people wo died in 2023, and on men only, since the database for female chess people proved much too small for valid statistical analyses.

It is needless to say that the age at death of a male chess person has to be compared to the life expectancy of the general male public in the country where he lives. Since obviously a chess player that dies at age 70 is above average if he lived mostly in Bulgaria, for example, where the male population has a life expectancy of 68,1 years. But if he lived in Switzerland, where male life expectancy is 81.9 years, he would have died 12 years prematurely compared to the average.

Chess players live longer!

The result of our data analysis is surprising. In spite of all the tension, in spite of all the long hours of sitting at chess boards, and often the difficulties that a life spent to a non-negligable degree in chess brings with it, male chess people have a 2.7 % longer life expectancy than the general male population in their country.

Globally, this life-prolonging effect is 1.95 years: the average age of chess-related males in various countries at death in 2023 was 73.27 years, compared to 71.32 years as the average life expectancy of males in the countries in which the chess players lived. So chess is good for us.

We assume that a person with a relevant connection to chess will spend about two hours everyday on the game, from the age of ten over a lifetime of average length. Of course, some people will spend much more time, for example grandmasters. Some will start earlier, others will start later and will spend less time. But two hours on average seems about right. That would mean 46,000 hours spent over an average lifetime. These chess hours lengthen the chess people's lives by 17,000 hours. In other words, every chess hour lengthens life on the average by 0.37 hours, i.e. by roughly 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes are two thirds of a microlife, which corresponds to 30 minutes. And this is the amount by which a risk of one micromort shortens your life expectancy.

So statistically chess has a negative risk: it prolongs your life. An hour spent at chess lengthens your life by 20 Minutes. With three hours of chess you lengthen your life by 1 hour.

Chess compared to physical exercise and marriage

Let us compare this with other things that lengthen your life. If you perform sports in a moderate way for one hour, this increases your life expectancy by two hours. So this effect is more pronounced. However, the effect of the second hour after the first beneficial hour doesn’t do you any good anymore. And the third hour after the previous two actually shortens your life expectancy. Furthermore, you should consider that doing one hour of moderate sports every day over a period of 50 years extends your life expectancy by four years. But in these 50 years you have spent a full two years doing sports. So it is best to select a sport that you enjoy.

Just getting married lengthens the life of men compared to single men by a full nine years on the average. This longer life effect of marriages is also enjoyed by women, but it only amounts to six years. On the other hand, in most countries women, on the average, live between three to six years longer than men.

There are many other things that lengthen your life, include living upstairs in a house rather than on the first floors. And also owning your apartment rather than renting it.

Jacob Woge supplied the following data collected by the tiny, home-based chess club, Czentovic, which has a rich quiz tradition. One theme was, “Chess and Death”. Here are the life age of 25 chess masters: 

"Note the recurring 64,” he writes. To Jacob's list we two player we have known personally – and counted as friends:

• Yuri Averbakh – 100. The Russian chess grandmaster and author, chairman of the USSR Chess Federation from 1973 to 1978. He was the first centenarian FIDE Grandmaster.
   
• George Koltanowski – 96. The Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer set the world's blindfold record in 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded. Here's a story about the incredible mental feats of George Koltanowski.
   
• Pal Benkö – 91. The Hungarian-American Grandmaster was an author and composer of endgame studies and chess problems. Pal wrote many articles for ChessBase, all the way until the end of his life. This eulogy article contains links to most of them.

Addendum

We have just learned that 50-year-old GM Ziaur Rahman suffered a heart attack after his 25th move in his 12th round game at the Bangladesh Championship. He died before he could be taken to hospital.

Ziaur Rahman's final game:

That is when tragedy struck. The sudden death of the popular grandmaster and coach caused consternation throughout the chess world. FIDE published an obituary. 

Links

Series by Frederic Friedel and Christian Hesse

• Part one: How dangerous is chess?
• Part two: How dangerous is life in general?
• Part three: The risk of playing chess
• Frederic Friedel: Gerontology – How long will you live?

Schachgeschichten – Chess Stories

This book was published in October 2022. It consists of alternating chapters, with Prof. Christian Hesse writing, in his entertaining style, about mathematical aspects of the Royal Game, and Frederic Friedel writing about his encounters with World Champions, of whom he got to know and befriended around a dozen.

The book has been published in German and is endorsed by five world champions (Garry Kasparov wrote the foreword).

If you speak German you can read the first 30 pages here. 

The book is available from Amazon for €20. Plans for an English language version are under way.