Chess is a beautiful game with great champions such as Bobby Fisher, Garri Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen. It is, however, not a game associated with physical health and longevity. Yet, new research finds that a chess grandmaster has a similar longevity to Olympic medalists. However, other research suggests that the longevity of these mental and physical athletes is related to their ability to meet certain basic needs, which we can all aspire to have.

How Was the Research Was Conducted

Researchers from Melbourne University and the University of Queensland used publicly available data on 1,208 International Grandmasters and 15,157 Olympic medalists across 28 countries. Grandmasters were chosen from 1950, when the grandmaster title first went into wide use. Olympic medalists were also identified from 1950 for the sake of comparability.

The researchers then estimated the longevity of grandmasters. They adjusted this for various factors such as longevity in their region and when the grandmaster was born. They then matched grandmasters or Olympic medalists to the life tables of the country they represented, using their year and age at risk, and gender.

What Did They Find?

The researchers found that the “survival rates” of grandmasters aged 30 and 60 were 87% and 15% respectively. A 30-year old grandmaster has a life expectancy of 53.6 years, compared to 45.9 years for the general population. Grandmasters in North America and Western Europe lived longer than those in Eastern Europe.

More surprisingly, grandmasters and Olympic medalists both had a “significant survival advantage over the general population”, with no meaningful difference separating grandmasters from Olympic medalists. That should give you some incentive to keep studying chess openings in 2022! Excellence in mental and physical activities both lead to longevity.

What About the Rest of Us?

Well, it could be that these results simply reflect good genes, or privileged backgrounds or other habits that drive success and longevity.

The researchers believe that ambitious chess players adjust their health habits to help them achieve success. For instance, they may reduce their consumption of alcohol and cut down on smoking, improve their nutrition, get more cardiovascular exercise, among other things. The aim being to improve their ability to solve chess problems. Indeed, chess champions such as Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, take their physical exercise very seriously.

A study in Circulation suggests an even more intriguing answer to the riddle of longevity. The study looked at ordinary people, rather than legends in their fields. It covered a 34-year period and studied 42,000 deaths. Subjects were assigned a rank from one to five, based on their lifestyle risk factors: not smoking, BMI between 18.5 and 24.9, getting a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a day, moderate consumption of alcohol, and a healthy diet. Subjects who met all five criteria had, at the age of 50, a life expectancy 14 years greater for women and 12.2 year greater for men, compared to those who did not do any of those five things.

So, it seems the real secret to longevity is being able to do a few basic things consistently across an extended period of your life. 

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stash member Adam Alosi