Update of the Ivanchuk saga by ChessToday.net (a fantastic daily chess newsletter)
Yesterday I (Mikhail Golubev) prepared an article for the newspaper Komanda about FIDE-related scandals (not an extremely funny work, frankly speaking), and, luckily, got comments by the Ukrainian federation President
Viktor Petrov who said that the federation received a letter from FIDE signed by Mr. Jarret. Ivanchuk should provide his explanations within three months; otherwise the matter will be decided without him. FIDE proposed to organise a meeting with Ivanchuk during the Wijk aan Zee tournament.
According to Petrov, the Ukrainian federation would request to take into consideration not only Ivanchuk’s past achievements, but also his psychological state after the loss against Kamsky. I also got comments (available at the link above) by the Ukrainian team captain, GM Tukmakov.
Vassily Ivanchuk’s own words are cited by Mikhail Khomich in his chess blog at Sports.ru (by the way, one of the most known chess blogs in Russian). A rough translation:
IVANCHUK: “This all seems like pure madness!! But such spectacles sometimes happen in our world. I simply left, being upset after losing a game, and did not listen to a man who I was seeing for the first time in my life, and whose identity I don’t know until now. You see what a comedy it was :-)”
Source: ChessToday.net
Can anybody please explain to me what drug can actually be use that will make you a better chess player???? If such a drug exists, maybe it can be used for other areas like: lawyers passing the BAR exam, taking the GRE, passing the engineering licensing exam, the SAT, etc.
This doping test in chess is totally ridiculous. And even the supporting argument by FIDE where we need doping test in Chess so our sport can be taken seriously. Well two things about this:
1. The whole doping thing is making our sport look like a joke for outsiders.
2. Any other federation or organization that hasn’t taken our sport seriously by now….we should ask them to stick it.
What is it, are we still sucking up to the Olympic Commitee hoping to see Chess as an event?? If so, the way to do this is not by adding non-sense rules as doping….it is by grabbing the media attention. We need to put Chess in the media once again as it was when Bobby Fisher won.
How would you that today? How about creating a WCC championship cycle with no favoritism to any players and that actually makes sense. Chess is the only ‘sport’ where a World Champion can still retain a tittle for years without having to defend it….that alone makes the whole World Chess Champion concept ridiculous. And last but not least….how about if FIDE actually start listening to the fans and try to accommodate SOME of their requests in their list of rules. Bring certain level of democracy to our organization!!
Of course there are substances that can make you perform better at chess. Not as much as Epo do, but it can still make a difference in a nine round tournament.
Anon said: ‘Of course there are substances that can make you perform better at chess. Not as much as Epo do, but it can still make a difference in a nine round tournament.’
I’m sorry, but can you list these substances….since I really believe that is total BS. Think about it for a minute….Chess is not about physical endurance…but about your intelligence, strategy, and memorization while on the chess board. What drug can be taken to enhance any of these things?????
Are you saying there is a drug that if you take it will make you smarter at a chess tournament???? If it exists, it should be mandatory for all polititians to take it!!!
Are you saying there is a drug that if you take it will make you a master of strategy during a chess tournament???? If so, all military personel would be taking it!!!
Are you saying there is a drug that if you take it will make you improve your memory while preparing for a chess tournament and then on top of that you would be able to retain the memorized concepts for long periods of time??? I’m sorry, but that would be a cure for alzheimers….which doesn’t exist yet.
So please….list the drugs and their SO CALLED uses and stop taking the FIDE juice.
Due to this discussion, I have taken a look at Wikipedia about the effect (physical, and psychological, IOW on the mind) of some substances. Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine#Effects
It is absurd! While some of the effects may sound useful, others are absolutely destructive.
If you are tired, you take some cups of coffee, tea or maybe an energy drink. That should have the desired effect to keep you awake, and will not be harmful (if not done in an excessive way).
Currently there are a lot of smartasses posting everywhere like “there are substances, blah…”. That’s just bullshit.
What would be the effect of taking some coffee or an energy drink before a game?
It will just help you to stay awake. It will not make you a better chessplayer!! If you are a 1500 player, drinking Red Bull before a game is not going to boost your game to 2800!!!! Any of you that have attended multiple rounds tournaments know that after a couple of rounds……you need some coffee or an energy drink.
Ironically, the true performance enhancing drugs in our mental sport (coffee, sodas, sports drinks) are not even being tested. Players (me included) openly appear at their board with these beverages. There’s no doubt that I play like an 1800 in the morning without my caffeine and like a 2300 after I’m juiced.
Of course there are substances that can make you perform better at chess. Not as much as Epo do, but it can still make a difference in a nine round tournament.
As a physician for a long time, the one and only substance I can think of being useful in the world of chess, would be amphetamines. But I am asking, how is it different, on a theoretical level from caffeine. Besides being stronger, which is a quantitative opposed to a qualitative difference. I can see how amphetamines can endanger the life of a bicyclist or the member of another hard physical sport, but I can’t imagine (bar serious pre-existing conditions) to be dangerous to a chess player. Yet, that was the ORIGINAL goal of the dopping control (the health of the athlete after the big scandal when a bicyclist died from amphetamine).
But then the whole concept started to live its own life. I don’t want to write a too long entry here, so I cut it short. Yes, there were some usage of chemicals which made the competition itself unfair (and unhealthy, see East Germans). But while in those cases, the chemicals became the core of the performance, in many sports they never did. You could pump triple doses of amphetamine in me, I still couldn’t win a chess game against any real chess player. Yet Amand half asleep could play a simultaneous game against 50 people and still win most. What I am trying to say, even the usage of dopping will not make a true qualitative difference. It may give a slight psychological edge, but that’s all. For that, it isn’t worth turning the chess world into a circus.
After all, Ivanchuk lost, now didn’t he? Dopping or not.
On a practical front there should be testing into whether some agents can help cognition. Chess may play an interesting role: 1. It is pretty stable – that is usually a 2200-2400 player plays near at his/her strength, 2. It is a competitive game – so it replicates a stressful environment. It would be simple to do a double blind control and see if performance is better or not. Because if it is, that is worth knowing. It may be that some agents are like some types of sports drugs – they won’t help the weekend athlete and so all of us sub 1700 ELO players can forget becoming GMs taking them, but it may give a real 5-10% performance boost – which in some sports is the difference between winning and last place. Sprinting and many athletics, a 5-10% difference is decisive. For a chess GM, winning one game in a tough round robin is the difference between +3 and taking clear first and being equal 3-6 place.
Look, dope testing may help to discover if somebody spiked Ivanchuk’s food to make him play like a patzer. We must allow the truth to come to light.
What I don’t understand is why we are still making such a fuzz about this all?
Ivanchuk tells us that he did not know the man who asked him to test for doping. I believe – because Chucky is Chucky – that he is sincere. There is absolutely no reason to believe Ivanchuk used doping or that he did not want to let him test for doping. INNOCENT until proven.
“Look, dope testing may help to discover if somebody spiked Ivanchuk’s food to make him play like a patzer. We must allow the truth to come to light.”
It’s not his food. It was his drink.
I think Maia Chiburdanidze put a pill in Chucky’s drink to seduce him into her chess lair. She wanted him to pass his pawn into her and she wanted to mate him with help from her huge battery operated black bishop.
Chucky had no chance for escape until some FIDE representative saved Chucky from having manly relations with Maia. Chucky’s head was swimming and he thought he heard the fellow mention drug testing, but Chucky only heard the hissing noise of Maia as he escaped her clutches once again.
Maia decided to drop a pill in Kortchnoi’s drink and was last seen heading back to his room.
Kortchnoi was last heard saying,”You look like my brother Leo comrade! Lets go to my room for more drink! Ja! This won’t be the last and only time you drink with me in your life! Ja!”
Maia only smiled and lumbered away with the esteemed GM.
this viagra anos sounds like sloan.
don’t you thunk they should drug test the winner, and not the loser?
The need to drug test the winner only is a fallacy, as it is an age-old Soviet tactic to blackmail opponents into crippling their own play. Ivanchuk is likely to have done so under duress
“this viagra anos sounds like sloan.”
Slaon isn’t that creative. Besides, no children were mentioned in the story. Slaon only likes children and farm animals.
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