Two steaks a day, for luck. A ChessBase feature published on October 11, 2026 collects superstitions of top players, from Jan-Krzysztof Duda's meals to Alexander Alekhine's Siamese cat. The piece asks why players lean on rituals when stakes rise and control feels thin.
The article, credited to ChessBase India, starts from a tension. Chess presents itself as a game of pure calculation with luck removed, but some elite players still hold on to lucky pens or rewear clothing.
On the science, the feature says studies indicate rituals may lift confidence and keep people working at something longer. The author adds that no one has shown they lead to better chess.
The writer compares it to sports fans who refuse to leave their seats during a match, even when they badly need the bathroom, in case moving breaks the spell.
"Just to be sure," Polish Grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda told Chess.com in 2020, explaining why he liked keeping lucky things while not really believing in superstition, ChessBase reported.
Duda's outfit and steaks
Following a victory during the 2018 Polish Championship, Duda kept his outfit unchanged, the feature reports.
Steak had been on the menu for his first meal on a winning day, so he went on eating two of them daily. The author remarks dryly that at least he got his protein.
ChessBase reads the anecdote as a picture of how routines grow. A single victory becomes a pattern, and switching shirts or meals starts to feel like inviting bad luck.
The piece is careful not to claim the clothes or the steaks won him anything. What it shows is how fast a player starts treating a streak as something to guard, the author argues.
Alekhine and the Siamese cat
The most memorable example in the feature belongs to Alexander Alekhine, who was world champion across the 1930s and 1940s.
Max Euwe, one of his opponents, later remembered Alekhine occasionally letting his Siamese cat sniff the board before play. When the cat was absent, Alekhine wore a sweater showing its picture, Euwe said.
The story comes from a 1978 interview with Euwe. It has been documented by the FIDE Open Chess Museum and by historian Edward Winter, ChessBase notes.
Because Euwe was recalling events decades later, the author advises treating it as his account, not as proof the cat came to every game or swayed any result.
A photo with the feature shows Alekhine with his cat, named Chess, in Amsterdam in 1935.
Petrosian, Spassky and numbers
The feature then draws on a republished conversation between Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky, whom it identifies as the tenth world champion.
At his first international event, Petrosian remembered hoping to draw number seven and to have White against the field's weakest opponent. Readers can find the rest of that anecdote in the full ChessBase piece.
The feature's central point is that no charm can alter a position. Its interest lies in why players grab one anyway when much is at stake and they feel short of control.
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