[the sun fan]

Originally Posted by melonpapes

Sorry but I'm failing to see how that doesn't just boil down to fast thinking and the ability to move the pieces, except for maybe the fact that memory has to be factored in, in the case that the other player might cheat. Surely thinking slowly isn't a benefit, so being quick thinking as well as forward thinking to all the possible moves of your opponent, seem to be the major "physical" factors to chess, besides moving the pieces. Am I missing something here? When I say speed, I mean movement speed and the endurance to keep that speed, not the speed of which one has to move an object on a board. Likewise, speed does not factor into Snooker at all for this reason. There is no benefit to being fast in Snooker. Likewise, the only benefit (as I see it) to being fast in chess is to execute the action of moving your piece to where you wish it to go before expelling too much time. This naturally ties into and correlates with being able to think quick.

"cheating" at the upper level just doesn't exist, and iirc the players must take notation of their opponents moves anyways so memory isn't even a factor (cheating using phones or earpieces to be fed optimal moves would be much more common, but that's another kind of cheating and not relevant)

I think it might surprise you to learn that older chess players do better under quicker time controls (the rapid chess champion was once over 70) and there is significant drop-off in age<->rating under slower time controls.