Chess, Math, and Music

This post is something I wrote a few years ago now (June 2019) on chess.com, when I was pretty active playing chess (online and in tournaments). At the time, I was climbing between 1500 and 1600 online ELO rating, to put some of the numbers in context (I eventually peaked at 1863 in early 2020). I was honestly a bit surprised by the results of this study at the time, as the sample size (231 games) is pretty statistically significant (i.e. not just the whim of random chance). I wouldn't draw any lasting scientific conclusions yet, but they do say classical music makes you smarter.

So as I play quite a bit of live chess (mostly blitz) here on Chess.com, and I am most often listening to classical (actually I just shuffle through my playlist, which is mostly classical, with some movie music and other stuff, but mostly classical) music while I do it, I began to wonder: does the composer of the music I am listening to affect my chess play at all, and if so, how much?

To track this, I started up an Access database, tracking the result of each game, my and the opponent's ratings, the composer and piece playing, and the chess.com CAPS score. I also tracked the color I had (white or black) and the result of the game right before in the session (win, loss, draw, or none if the game was the first in a session of play) to see if other factors (such as tilt) were more responsible for the play.

I have currently recorded this for 231 blitz games, all 3+2, 3+0, or 5+0 (I believe. There may be one or two that are some other time control.) Here are the results of all composers that registered for 6 or more games:

(Average Expected Wins Added Per Game is based off the ELO system of determining the expected score in a game based off the two ratings. For example, if, based on mine and the opponent's ratings, I was expected to get 0.3 points per game, and I drew, that would be 0.2 point added. This metric is the average of that for every game. ELO +/- is a rough estimate of the difference in ELO level I was playing at.)

The results of this are rather surprising. While most tend to be quite near average, the composers that tend to be more classical tend to be more towards the top, while the more romantic-style ones are nearer the bottom. Really, the most surprising result is Bach. When listening to Bach, I scored a reasonably astonishing 17.5/24. That's not even a skewed result of a small sample size. Bach gives me a performance rating of 1695.

Again, I was in the mid-1500 range at the time of writing, so to be playing at a 1695 statistical level is pretty significant.