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In Agatha Christies thriller A Chess Problem, published in 1927, a chess master dies due to a sudden heart attack in the middle of a chess game. It was a fictional book (in which Capablanca, Lasker and Rubinstein are mentioned), but there are examples in real life.
In 1933 Geza Maroczy, one of the strongest players a hundred years ago, was present when Adolf Olland (1867-1933), a chess master of the Netherlands, died through a similar fate during a tournament game. Maroczy later remarked that he, too, would like to die like this: “That's the best kind of death for a chess master”.
Over the years, there have been numerous other examples – though there aren't so many documented cases of chess grandmasters literally dying in the middle of a game. However, here are some who died during chess tournaments from heart attacks:
Death by chess: Vladimir Bagirow, Gideon Ståhlberg, Vladimir Simagin, Adolf Olland
There seem to be two standard situations of people dying a chess related death. The first one is due to a heart attack or stroke, often caused by the tension of a game of chess being played. Here are some examples:
The second standard situation arises from deadly violence connected to a game of chess just played. Here are some examples:
For more people who died a chess related deaths see Bill Wall's Deaths of Chessplayers from which the above examples are summarized. There you will find a large number of further players who died while engaged in chess activities.
Perhaps the most notable example of a direct chess death is that of Cecil Purdy, the first World Champion in Correspondence Chess.
On November 6, 1979, during a regular chess game in the Australia C
Let us pause in this situation for a moment. There are many words that he could have said, for example: "I have tried to be a good father. But I don’t know if I succeeded." Or perhaps: "You have to take care of the family now. I won't be able to do it any more."
What did Cecil Purdy say? With the little energy remaining, he uttered these last words with his last breath before he died: “I have a win, but it will take some time.” For us, this is one of the prime examples of the immense passion one can have for chess.
After having talked about all these chess-induced death one might wonder whether chess is in fact a healthy or a risky game?
The answer is not easy, as we will see. In part two we will try to statistically quantify the risk of playing chess, using a unit developed by Ronald Howard in the 1970s: the micromort. Micro stands for one millionth, and mort is the French word for death. So one micromort is statistically one millionth of a chance of dying. If a million people are exposed to a risk of this magnitude, then on the average one of them will die.
One micromort is the risk of a 25-year-old male in Central Europe of getting up in the morning and not surviving the day, for whatever reason. It happens to one in a million 25-year-olds. At 90, you are facing 500 micromort and at age 100, you have 1500 micromort against you every day. The risk of running a marathon is eight micromort, climbing Matterhorn 2840 micromort, attempting to scale Mount Everest: 38.000 micromort.
So what is the risk of playing a game of chess? And does chess in general detract or add to your life expectancy? Stay tuned for a statistical analysis of these questions in part two.
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.
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