[ex3xu]

"death": losing player called to greater things, one hopes.

An inspiringly optimistic spiritual outlook from the PGN standard, so thank you for that.

Technically, over the board one could just wait until their deceased opponent flags to claim a win, but in practice, for every occasion I'm aware of in high level tournament play, the remaining player will adjudicate the game honestly according to their evaluation of the position -- even if that means resigning out of respect for his or her opponent. See Karapanos-Zoler (2009), or Meier-Niyizibi from the 2014 Olympiad [1].

One more thing to note is that playing high level chess is in fact a strenuous activity; one grandmaster playing while wearing a heart monitor recorded burning 560 calories in two hours. [2] Top players like Carlsen or Caruana keep themselves in peak physical condition in addition to their chess preparation.

And although chess players as a demographic may have certain increased predispositions to conditions like Asperger's, schizophrenia, or cardiovascular diseases (likely due to the sedentary nature of the game), I'll relay something one older player once commented to me: that he has never found a documented case of a high level tournament chess player succumbing to Alzheimer's disease.

[0] https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1554879

[1] https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1771703

[2] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste...

[lenzm]

I don't think that's too surprising, I doubt you can play chess at a high level with early stages of Alzheimer's.

[kevinventullo]

I think what they meant was that they’d never heard of someone who was at any point in time a high level chess player eventually succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

[forty]

I'm not sure what to conclude of that though. Does it mean that playing high level chess lower risks of contracting Alzheimer's or does it mean that people with low Alzheimer's risks have higher chance to become high level chess players?

[thaumasiotes]

It might also mean that high-level chess players contract Alzheimer's at the normal rate, but it goes undiagnosed because their lower functioning still seems fine to everyone else.

[spoonjim]

Or, high level chess players identify so strongly with their intellect that in the face of dementia they retreat into isolation (or even suicide) where they don’t become a data point. Correlations can come from anywhere.

[tialaramex]

We know a bunch of other intellectual capabilities have mitigating effects on mental decline, presumably because they exercise brain plasticity which will then later be called into play as things fail.

For example being multi-lingual is reported to help.

[raxxorrax]

Or he simply forgot.