Chess and Coffee
Hi everyone,
Do you drink coffee? If yes, then this post is for you.
After binging the Huberman podcast archive I now have a new perspective on the body and mind. The first thing that came to my mind was coffee and caffeine.
But why should chess players care? I asked on Twitter if people drink coffee while playing OTB chess.
You can see that a good share of chess players drink coffee during games. And with the atomic habits mindset of the aggregation of marginal gains, we should look into all the small things that affect our play.
The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.
- Dave Brailsford, cycling coach
But let’s first take a dive into what caffeine is and how it affects the body. I recently discovered James Hoffmann’s (author, barista, online influencer, and coffee consultant) YouTube channel. He has made an excellent introduction explaining what caffeine is.
Positive effects of caffeine
block adenosine receptors and prevent the onset of drowsiness induced by adenosine
improves reaction time, wakefulness, concentration, and motor coordination
In a scientific paper from Johns Hopkins University called ‘Post-study caffeine administration enhances memory consolidation in humans’1 an experiment was made where the participants first did a memory learning task, got 200 mg of caffeine, and tested 24 hours later. The paper concluded, “We conclude that caffeine enhanced consolidation of long-term memories in humans.”
On the negative side
you may experience a caffeine crash when the body metabolize the caffeine, which would be something to avoid during a game
Diarrhea
Sweating
Nausea
Increased heart rate
Increased breathing rate
Next, the question arises how should chess players use coffee while playing?
Caffeine in the body is halved every 5-6 hours. A Reddit user made a diagram showing the amount of caffeine in the body during a day with 3 cups of coffee at 9 AM, 12 PM, and 3 PM.
It might be useful to look at how your level of caffeine drops at peaks during a chess game and if it might affect your decision-making?! The American military has made an algorithm to dose coffee optimal to soldiers with different amounts of sleep. In the article presenting the findings, it was concluded:
”Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world. Hence, to be useful, mathematical models that predict the effects of sleep loss on human neurobehavioral performance must account for the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine. For the first time, we showed that a mathematical model can accurately predict the effects of single and multiple doses of caffeine on group-average performance across the continuum of sleep loss—from limited nightly sleep to continuous sleep loss—for multiple nights. This model forms the basis for the development of comprehensive sleep-management tools and for the generation of testable hypothesis of realistic sleep-loss schedules involving the consumption of caffeine products. “2
It might be a little too much to start using an algorithm to optimize your caffeine intake on game day, but I think it is worth considering how you can avoid spikes and drops in your caffeine level during games. It might be worth consuming products like dark chocolate or green tea with lower amounts of caffeine to avoiding a caffeine crash during the endgame stage of an important game.
I did discover a useful tool if you want to input your own coffee intake during a day:
https://benclarkxyz.github.io/blog/coffee/index.html
I hope you found this post interesting! Leave a comment with your thoughts below. If you like the newsletter I would be glad if you help spread the word!
Best,
Martin
A Unified Model of Performance for Predicting the Effects of Sleep and Caffeine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5020365/pdf/aasm.39.10.1827.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1dJEJMs1t_3Lxd_sDOjZP3ev_Xci5KyTwShQILD27_hC3wGZyHen_KrQM