This is the 2004 US Women’s Silver Medalist Team
Immediately following my win in the last round of the 2004 Olympiad in Calvia, I was told that I was “randomly” selected to take a drug test. Could it be because I had the best performance of the entire Women’s Olympiad after 9 years of retirement? Coincidence?
When I asked what FIDE was testing for, they seemed to have no idea. I do not drink. I do not smoke. I do not drink soda. I eat healthy food and I exercise. So that makes me the perfect candidate for drug testing? I guess.
Here is another article about the upcoming drug testing policy in chess. What do you think?
‘Doping in chess? Rubbish!’
Joe Williams
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 23:04 IST
MUMBAI: “Doping and chess? Rubbish!” is how former world number 3 Nigel Short reacts when asked his take on doping test for chess players at the Asian Games in Doha, beginning on Friday.
The Englishman says he has no idea how drugs could be used to enhance chess performance.
“I don’t know which drug could help a chess player in improving his game. As far as I know, it takes years to develop one’s knowledge, and if there was something like enhancing your brain with drugs, there would not be schools or colleges.”
“In the last 100 years or so, have we heard of anyone cheating in this game? No,” he says, while adding that it (testing chess players) was just a waste of time and money.
Dronavalli Harika too has no clue. “I don’t think there exists any drug which can help a chess player enhance his or her performance,” she says.
Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte too feels it is just a waste of time. “Drugs in chess? You must be kidding,” reacts Kunte, who finished fourth in the Commonwealth Chess Championship. “Precious time will be wasted in the process. But having said that, one has to abide by the rules laid down by the Asian Games organisers.”
The full story can be read here.
Are there any chess grandmasters who take drugs?
Are there any grandmasters who avoided playing on tournament where doping tests were announced?
Regarding your selection, it could have been a similar policy used in cycling and other sports, where the winner or perhaps the top finishers are tested, plus some number of participants chosen at random.
Another possibility is that someone had it in for you and that is why you were chosen. Come to think of it, in the chess world this explanation sounds like the more plausible one. 🙂
There are many questions involved in this issue, and I’m only going to comment on one of them: Can medication allow a player to perform better than he or she would be able to without it?
The answer is, of course, yes, absolutely. Chess players find long matches draining — would everyone agree that it is more difficult to play accurately in the tenth game of a match than in the first game? — so they could certainly benefit from the use of prescription amphetamines to help maintain focus. Feeling sluggish around move 20? Take a bathroom break and go pop an Adderall. If you haven’t taken these drugs, you probably don’t realize just how effective they are.
Claims that chess players cannot benefit from drug use are like claims that baseball players cannot benefit from steroid use. The claim is that drug use can’t improve skill, but the point is that it makes it easier to apply that skill, which is pretty much the same thing.
By the way, athletes have to use steroids over long periods of time, because it takes time for their muscles to change. Chess players need only use amphetamines during games, because the change is immediate.
The mathematician Paul Erdös regularly used amphetamines for his work:
“The mathematician Paul Erdös, who famously opined that ‘a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems,’ began taking Benzedrine in his late 50s and credited the drug with extending his productivity long past the expiration date of his colleagues.”
This is a quote from a really interesting article on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2118315
So yes, drugs can definitively improve your performance in chess.
If GMs take drugs, it is their personal choice. No drugs give unfair advantage to a chess player.
This whole concept of drug testing in Chess is a load of rubbish!
I think its kind of stupid……but I dont know all the details behind this either. So if nobody is using anything illegal they shouldnt have anything to be paranoid about, so I dont see the big deal. As far as mind-enhancing drugs I know there is some stuff out there I just dont know what it is. If they wanna test…so be it ….who cares.
Of course drugs can enhance chess performance! (eg betablockers)
Drug testing is only normal. If Chess wants to be accepted as a sport, even Olympical, then it should also agree to the testing.
And if there’s nothing to hide, why the fear of testing then?!?
“Drugs in chess? You must be kidding,”
Isn’t that what they said in other sports, a long time ago?
“I do not drink. I do not smoke. I do not drink soda. I eat healthy food and I exercise.”
Humans are famous for not believing each other, even when one is telling the truth.
One of the many problems with drug testing is what to do with positive tests.
Some positive test turn out to be negative later on, but can still cast unjustified suspicions on the innocent test taker. Sometimes the initial positive test receives media attention, but the later negative contra expertise does not. Some of the public audience remembers only the initial positive test.
Another problem is what to do with chess player who have been found to test positively. Banish them from tournaments for a couple of years? What a waste of talent and quality of life.
And what would that gain us? Fair competition? Hah! Fairness of competition does not improve because of drug testing.
Another problem is what happens if chess players refuse on the basis of their principles to participate in drug testing. Soms people may think they must be guilty because they refuse. Their national organizations may no longer invite them to their national team or national championships. All unjustified.
Drug testing creates problems and it doesn’t solve any. We must all say no to drug testing and we must actively support our top players who refuse to take tests.
Hmmm… Long games that require not only intense concentration but also a large amount of creativity;
sounds like a job for a THC and Adderall cocktail…
The skinny GMs use speed, and the heavier ones are that way because of the “munchies”… Actually, drugs should be required since it seems that the world’s best players are either really thin or rather thick(think about it).
>gk said…
I think Kramnik takes some drugs.
They are doing some bad things to his concentration!This also explains how he was checkmated in 1 move vs Fritz.
>
What drugs can one take to make him invent facts out of thin air and believe them just as certainly as if he’d discovered them?
“prescription amphetamines to help maintain focus”
you must obviously never have tried drugs (the “illegal” ones). i’ve tried most of them, and not one of them have ever improved my chessperformance. amphetamines can keep you awake for sure, but as for focus, no way. it can be fun, but you wont get better. maby lsd will give you some new bright ideas 😉
drug testing in chess is ridiculous!
Nice legs Susan !!!
Adderall & Ritalin help chess players maintain their concentration during games. College students use these drugs during exam periods, to maximize their alertness during the tests. Should such drugs be banned in chess and therefore tested for? Perhaps.
I agree with the 4th commenter in this thread that the case of the great mathematician Paul Erd”os is highly relevant to chess. I was not a “regular” of his anywhere near the extent my undergraduate and graduate thesis advisers were, but I revered him and met him at conferences where people even sent him to me to get chess news, and I may be the youngest person in the world to have a coveted “Erd”os Number” (our Kevin Bacon game:) of 2 through one of his (i.e. my) own PhD students, Dr. Arun K. Jagota. Google Erdos coffee theorems turns up several relevant hits (none incorrect to my knowledge) which corroborate/bugfix the references in the Slate story.
Here I speak in contrast not only to the speakers quoted in this main blog item, but also to words I heard this morning on NPR’s “Morning Edition” which appear to be attributed to Ilyumzhinov himself:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6559226
One reason I believe the chess world needs to confront this seriously is prominent also in the argument over steroids: influence on our youth.
I believe we must work earnestly on the technically difficult task of parsing stimulants that are part of normal professional life from those that are not. At this very moment I am carrying out Erd”os’ *words* by drinking my 3rd cup of coffee today while finishing two CS research papers at once for the same Sunday night conference deadline!
As anonymous (2) stated, it wasn’t really random. A player was chosen “at random” from each of the medal winning teams. Then an equal number of players from the rest of the field. At least that’s how I remember it. And I was there! One of the medal winners didn’t want to take the test, but fortunately a coach calmed her down and accompanied her to the testing area. “Fortunately” because if you refuse the test, your results are turned into zeros. That is what happened to amateur players Bobby Miller of Bermuda, and Shaun Press of Papua New Guinea. They refused to take the test. They are 21st century refuseniks.
Has a grandmaster refused to go to a particular tournament because of possible drug testing? Yes, Jan Timman. There may be others. Not because they thought they might be caught with a banned substance in their urine, but for the ethical reason that it was disrespectful to the person, the grandmaster, without any cause having been shown.
“Are there any grandmasters who take drugs?” Sure! All kinds, from cigarettes and coffee, the world’s most popular stimulants, to ginkgo biloba, extracted from the leaves and seeds of an ancient tree, to …, just like in the real world.
One of the problems with the drug tests is that there is no substance which is *known* to improve performance at chess. Those who are suggesting X, Y or Z are guessing, and might be doing a disservice to the impressionable. For example, beta blockers were mentioned. But some Dutch guy tried beta blockers and said they didn’t work, at all. Anecdotal, I agree. But nobody has shown that a particular substance will improve *your results* *at chess*.
Another problem is that the list of banned substances comes from the world of athletics. Again, since nobody has shown performance enhancement *at chess* for any substance, they couldn’t do their testing thang if they had to rely on research. Research, what a concept. They would have a null list of banned substances.
There may be substances that improve your results at chess. They are probably not on the list of banned substances.
Recently, I played in a 6-round strong tournament with a bad head cold. In the first two rounds I had a performance rating of below 2000. During the second round I started to take a prescription remedy. In the last 4 rounds I had a performace rating close to 2800. Of course, the effect was “random” (like my play) and the samples (of games played!) too small.
Of far greater concern than chemical enhancement of play is electronic enhancement of play, i.e., having a computer surreptitiously help you with your chess analysis during the game.
The same subject is being discussed in the blog of tech guru John Dvorak.
—
Jonathan Berry
Steve Rosenberg cheats so bad his urine has the best attacking line according to Fritz in it.
The comment by “ken regan” 3 spots above is indeed I; I’d forgotten I’d registered before, and I’ll try to get the accounts consolidated under my preferred handle “KWRegan”.
For perhaps the opposite of “small-world syndrome”: while checking Erd”os Numbers at http://www.oakland.edu/enp/Erdos1 under “JAGOTA”, I discovered that my former colleague Xin Wang now at Stony Brook shares an Erd”os Number of 2 through my same student! I have a fabulous tin of finest Chinese tea from her as a personal thank-you for other things, but I had no awareness of that at all. Also the Google links do have some inaccuracies but collectively paint the right picture, even (as I meant to say) fixing the attribution of Erd”os’ famous saying to Alfred Re’nyi.
Ahhh…but now we have discovered the truth; the secret behind the success/
Susan, Fischer, and others communicate with each other during chess games with other off-site players and coaches via a previously unknown “chess frequency”.
In a top secret Russian location we have identified this secret “natural frequency” and will now take steps to neutralize it during chess matches.
Lazlo knows…and now we know…the chess world will soon be very different…
Yes, there are big, big implications behind discovering this new “natural frequency” that some chess players silently use to communicate with one another. Some researchers believe that it approaches what some have called “ESP” in the past, while others are not sure if it is even part of the conscious brain.
Soon, we shall know…
Wow! Look at the hot women chess champions!
No wonder Truong is smiling!
Sve četiri dame na fotki ste fantastične mačke za fantastične praske.