Magnus Carlsen: Daily Routine

With five-hour games and 6,000 calories burned a day, Magnus Carlsen's chess routine looks more like an elite athlete's than a grandmaster's.

You wouldn’t know it at a first glance, but playing chess can be an extremely gruelling sport. An ESPN article revealed that chess players sitting down all day playing in a tournament can burn up 6,000 calories a day, “three times what an average person consumes in a day.”

Neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky believes that “grandmasters sustain elevated blood pressure for hours in the range found in competitive marathon runners.” This can lead to some chess players losing 10-12 pounds over the course of a tournament.