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Burning calories with chess and video games
Your brain is o.p
Cool Ishu
April 24, 2025
Did you know using your brain can burn calories?
Your brain uses about 25 percent of your calories and games such as chess or video games can burn even more.
Here is the data for chess games:
Duration | Casual Play 🧩 (Low Focus) | Focused Play 🎯 (Blitz/Online) | Tournament Intensity ♟️ (High Stress) |
|---|---|---|---|
5 minutes | ~6 calories | ~8–10 calories | ~12–13 calories |
10 minutes | ~12 calories | ~16–20 calories | ~25 calories |
15 minutes | ~18 calories | ~24–30 calories | ~37–40 calories |
30 minutes | ~36 calories | ~48–60 calories | ~75–80 calories |
This data shows chess does not burn much calories and that you would need to play 24 hours of intense chess to burn off just one pound.
Here is some data for video games:
Game (Device) – Intensity | 5 min (kcal) | 10 min (kcal) | 15 min (kcal) | 30 min (kcal) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Brawl Stars (mobile) – Casual | ~8 | ~16 | ~24 | ~48 |
Brawl Stars – Competitive | ~9 | ~18 | ~28 | ~55 |
Fortnite (console) – Casual | ~8 | ~17 | ~26 | ~51 |
Fortnite – Competitive | ~10 | ~20 | ~30 | ~59 |
😅 What Does That Mean?
Playing Fortnite competitively for ~1 hour/day = lose 1 pound in about a month.
Casual Brawl Stars? You’d be tapping for over a day and a half straight to burn that pound 🤯
Summary:
Your brain uses a quarter of your calories and playing video games and chess can burn calories. Depending on the way you are playing you can burn even more calories.Thanks for reading.