Ashwin Subramanian: My experiments with Biofeedback in Chess

How does playing competitive chess affect your Heart Rate? Did you know you can burn hundreds of calories just sitting at the chess board for a couple of hours? What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV) & can HRV training improve chess performance? How can Eye Tracking be used during post-game analysis? Ashwin decided to address these questions inspired by the growing use of biofeedback by top athletes in improving their performance & also prior experiments in events such as Isle of Man by measuring his own Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Calories in addition to Eye Tracking during a series of online chess games of various formats to draw conclusions on how these affected his Chess performance. He also interviewed several chess players, coaches, commentators & audience to hear their perspective on how such information could be useful for audience and players.In his presentation, Ashwin is introducing the concept of Biofeedback in Chess & share his conclusions on its usefulness (for audience & player) based on his experiments along with perspectives from various players, coaches, commentators & audience along with technological advancements that enable new opportunities with biofeedback in chess. He is sharing how such experiments can be easily done by anyone & hopes to inspire an expanded use of biofeedback in chess along with additional experiments by players & institutions.

As part of the Creativity and Innovation Talks on 9th October 2021.