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Chess and stress

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RogerHolly

I'm 78, so you young guys may not relate to this.

Everyone knows that chess can be stressful. Recently, for the first time ever, I've been experiencing high heart rates and even afib during and after hard games. Note that I was a long-distance runner for many years, and normally have a resting heart rate of 48-52 bpm. Doctor says I have an exceptional heart, but I havent told him about this "chessing myself into afib" yet. 

Falling down dead at the board is not my idea of ending a game. Any one else of you senior players experienced anything similar?

AgileElephants

In my experience, the most stressful games are with short time controls. The shorter, the more stressful. It could be a good idea to stay away from blitz and bullet. Daily games are essentially stress free for me, so maybe play those.

Yao_Wang
I’m not senior, but I also get crazy stressed when playing chess, and sometimes have a hard time breathing and it’s probably because I get stressed out at the idea of losing ELO.
ChessMasteryOfficial

Stick to slower time controls.

checkmated0001

I am definitely NOT a senior, but I can still relate. Chess can be extremely stressful for some reason (probably because of the AI overlords staring down on us and judging everything we do + faster time controls). Not fully understanding the problem, there's probably not much advice I can give, but it's possible that you're getting overly invested into each game and that's making you stressed about the result. Just have fun experimenting with weird stuff and don't take it too seriously.

Also, long distance running is fun! Always good to run into a fellow runner, regardless of differences in experience.