The game of chess: Future directions for sports nutrition and supplementation

Abstract

Competitive chess is a cognitively intensive sport that demands sustained executive control, complex visuospatial processing, prolonged attention, and effective regulation of psychological stress under time pressure. Despite growing professionalization, research on nutritional strategies to support chess performance remains limited. Existing work has largely emphasized pharmacological cognitive enhancers, which offer limited ecological validity and raise ethical and regulatory concerns, while comparatively little attention has been paid to safe, non-prohibited interventions applicable to real-world competition. This paper synthesizes evidence on the neurocognitive and psychophysiological demands of competitive chess and identifies priorities for future nutrition and supplementation research. Drawing on mechanistic and translational insights from cognitive neuroscience and esports, we evaluate dietary supplements with potential to support cerebral bioenergetics, attentional stability, and stress modulation. Finally, we propose a structured, ecologically grounded research framework to guide evidence-based, ethically compliant performance optimization in chess.