Doping controls in chess...?

[Skybird]

Since long the international chess federation FIDE is trying (in vain) to give chess the image of a physical sports like any other, establishing it as a sports for the Olympic competition (although there already are chess Olympics being held). In order to do so, they have established a scheme for doping controls amongst chess players - which I find simply absurd. The controvery runs since years, and respect amongst top players is said to run very low.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...595819,00.html

Using beta-blockers to keep blood pressure low, as said in the essay, most often cause detrimental effects than the desired ones, not only in chess: you may remain calmer, but your mental focus also calms down, inevitably, as that Helmut Pfleger in the article is referred to: his playing strength dropped significantly (Pfleger is a wel known german master and probably the most popular and well-known player over here, author of many books on chess, and a psychologist who also wrote about chess psychology).

When now an international heavy-weight in chess, Ivanchuk, gets accused of doping, for he refused to comply with this idiotic procedure, then this reminads me of an open letter by german Grandmaster Robert Hübner, who has retreated from the Olympic team in protest and fired a very angry open letter at FIDE, bot that he is the first one doing so, the list of prominent names going to war with the international federation becomes longer and longer.

http://www.chessbase.de/nachrichten.asp?newsid=8454

He argues, like many before him, that there are no stimulants that would allow you to play better, and bypass the long, difficult process of learning and studying and gaining experience and routine, and that it is a dangerous thing how uncritical such cointrol mechanisms nowadays get accepted and people being stripped of personal independance, responsibilities and rights in general, all in the name of law and order, war on terror, or political correctness.

what angers me most, is FIDE, which since long has the reputation to be deeply corrupt and desinterested in what is best for chess, but is intersted in making it as profitable for officials and bureaucrats and raising them additional funds to let them travel around in the world and live in 5 star hotels, have gala dinners, and live a high life while keeping their ranks closed to public transparency and countercontrol and not giving a damn for being objective, or acting for the interest of the game and the players. This legacy dates back into the soviet era, where the FIDE repatedly took a heavy bias pro or against players in high profile championships, namely the world championship(s) between Karpov and Kasparov - which ultimately led to a victorious but frustrated Kasparov trying to found an alternative players' association, and leaving FIDE behind, an attempt which he admitted failed after some years. But FIDE has learned nothing from it, and puts the interests of officials and leaders far above the interest of the game and the players, not acting on their behalf and in their interest, but trying to dump them into submission so to allow officials live an even more glamorous life. The level of corruption, which even leads to chnaging tournament rules and conditions while the tournament is still running, makes me wanting to vomit in their faces. Similiar things are beign said about FIFA and the IOC, but my impression nowhere things are as worse as inside FIDE. Bloodsucking parasites. makes you wishing for a fly swat. and now you see why they want chess getting established as a physical sports under the umbrelly of the regular olymoics: it would embedd FIDE inside the structures of the IOC institutions, giving FIDE officials access to the even greater revenues and glamour candies coming along with that. Chess and sports has nothing to do with it. The doping controls thus are complete nonsens, but are being run since the IOC demands them for anything it should recognise as an Olympic sport. It's just that - chess is no sports like any other. And what's next being scanned for, and that helps to play better"? Breathing air? Too much oxygen in the tournament room? more then a cup of coffee in the morning? Or should player getting banned from the running match if their heart rate or blood prssure goes too high (which also helps the body to increase mental awarenes)? Or should we limit the ammount of pages of chess literature each player is allowed to consume per year?

Ha, it's ridiculous.

It's a crying shame, and a disgrace for the finest game on earth.

[VipertheSniper]

I also read about that Ivanchuk incident in the saturday addition to our paper, and was like "WTF? doping in chess? How ridiculous is that?" It didn't however mention the background for those doping controls, that the FIDE want's to make chess a sport at the olympics. Now this makes some sense to me, atleast from a FIDE's point of view, but it's still absurd.

[CaptainHaplo]

I agree this is absurd on its face. However - one could make the argument that some supplements (natural) can increase higher brain functions - including cognitive ability and memory.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/6/1669S#SEC4
(Read the conclusion regarding adult brains)

Now no player needs steroids to lift the pieces and move them - but one could say that intaking substances for the purpose of enhancing your mental ability could be considered "cheating" unless it was something everyone could do - which in this case - it would be.

If they want to regulate how much vitamins A, B6, B12, and C a person has - thats lame.

The game of Kings was meant to be a contest of the mind - a strategic battle without the blood. If they do this - they might as well not allow a player to jog or physically "warm up" as some players do - as the increased respitory and circulatory rates would give them an "advantage".

However - I will say this - the brain is a muscle like any other in one way - if you fail to use it - it will atrophy.

[SteamWake]

Meh... this 'contriversy' is raging on the poker circuit as well.

To quote the nascar folks... "if you aint cheatin you aint tryin" :p

[1480]

If they are attempting to make chess into an Olympic sport (I might have missed something) heaven help us all......

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

I agree this is absurd on its face. However - one could make the argument that some supplements (natural) can increase higher brain functions - including cognitive ability and memory.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/6/1669S#SEC4
(Read the conclusion regarding adult brains)

Now no player needs steroids to lift the pieces and move them - but one could say that intaking substances for the purpose of enhancing your mental ability could be considered "cheating" unless it was something everyone could do - which in this case - it would be.

If they want to regulate how much vitamins A, B6, B12, and C a person has - thats lame.

The game of Kings was meant to be a contest of the mind - a strategic battle without the blood. If they do this - they might as well not allow a player to jog or physically "warm up" as some players do - as the increased respitory and circulatory rates would give them an "advantage".

However - I will say this - the brain is a muscle like any other in one way - if you fail to use it - it will atrophy.

the most potent agent used by chess players, is coffeine. and very many players are known to drink coffee in huge quantities. Nevertheless, coffeine is perfectly legal.

the problem also is that chess is stressing for the cardio-vascular system, but in other ways does not affect the physical body (except that long sitting on a chair). Chess players do not know much about medical and physiological aspects. as a player you must now fear that you take a regular drug for a health problem you have, get accused od doping - and sentenced to pay fines in the 5-6 digit range.

What makes a good chess player, is knowledge, experience, routine, and then again knowldcge, more knowledge and plenty of knowledge. Nothing can replace knowledge, and nothing can bypass or shortcut the long time it takes to get your ind trained to recognise and think in patterns and constelalation, not in single pieces anymore. Whatever you consume in drugs and no matter how much awake or sleepy you are - these are the real challenges to become a good player, and doping cannot help to make them easier and shorter for you. It is complete nonsens.

as I said, FIDE did not raise this issue before it wanted to participate in the luxurrious travel life for it's top officials under the IOC umbrella. If FIDE would not have started to try getting the IOC's nod for this, nobody would speak of trying to see chess as a regular physical sport and getting it into the regular Olympic games. and as I also said, the deep-rooting corruptness of FIDE has a long tradition. they even have started to change the tournament modus with the tournament still running. Consider this: a boxing fight after round 5 declared to run for 8 or fifteen rounds, instead of the stated 12 rounds. the final quarter of a Basketball match being cancelled in the running tournament. the finals at the football world championship after the first half being decided to now run for another set of two half of 15 minutes, and the need to win by a two goal margin, else immediate penbalty shooting.

Dancing, figure ice skating, also is said to suffer from too much corruption and bad judges. But I tell you, nowhere it is as bad as in chess, and FIDE. I already hated them when I was at school - that is 25 years ago, and Soviet party interests played a heavy role in FIDE-president's actions, as the many stories around Spasski-Fisher, Karpov-Kortschnoi and Karpov-Kasparov showed.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Dancing, figure ice skating, also is said to suffer from too much corruption and bad judges.

Yea but no one gives a crap.

[Sailor Steve]

Anything that has to be judged isn't really a competition. I think chess is more olympian that those others.

But it's not physical at all, is it?

[UnderseaLcpl]

@Sky

I don't really know what to think of this, as I had always thought of chess as an un-dopeable sport, but since you're a psychologist, I have a question for you, even if it is a bit naive;

Amphetamines, or any other substance that could increase the rate and volume of neurotransmitters released, couldn't speed up neural processes at all could they? If they could, would there be corresponding decrease in cogency?

The main reason I ask this is because I want to hear your answer. I know a psychology professor who brought this up the other day in conversation. His take on the subject is that any gain in the speed with which neural impulses are transmitted or recieved would be offset by random firings of other neurotransmitters caused by such drugs, causing interference.

Admittedly, this is only marginally topical, but as long as we're talking about the effects of drugs on neurobiological processes, I thought I'd ask.

[Letum]

A long time ago all sports and games where played for the love of the sport/game.
Then the professionals split from the amateurs. For a while amateur sports where just
as popular, but the lure of money swayed all the best players into professionalism until
all the fame and renown was taken from the amateurs.

The meaning of the word 'amateur' even changed to mean "lacking in skill", rather than
playing for the love of the sport/game.

Professionalism fared no better. Power and money corrupted it; cheating, drugs and
treating players as political or financial assets has become the norm.



Chess seams to me to have fared well, keeping to it's amateur roots. It's a shame if
this is changing and it is heading down the road so many sports have taken.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

@Sky

I don't really know what to think of this, as I had always thought of chess as an un-dopeable sport, but since you're a psychologist, I have a question for you, even if it is a bit naive;

Amphetamines, or any other substance that could increase the rate and volume of neurotransmitters released, couldn't speed up neural processes at all could they? If they could, would there be corresponding decrease in cogency?

The main reason I ask this is because I want to hear your answer. I know a psychology professor who brought this up the other day in conversation. His take on the subject is that any gain in the speed with which neural impulses are transmitted or recieved would be offset by random firings of other neurotransmitters caused by such drugs, causing interference.

Admittedly, this is only marginally topical, but as long as we're talking about the effects of drugs on neurobiological processes, I thought I'd ask.

Neurons always fire in bundles, and to what degree this helps to let the effect caused by the firing "stray" a bit, could be debated endlessly - we simply don't know precisely. So it is possible that a chemically implemented increase in neural activity could very well do more destractive effect - too much or too little focussed activity - than normal neural activity, because you do not know in advance what kind of neural increase in activity you will get. From studies with stroke patients for example we know that if you have two groups, and have the one trying to fight motoric deficits after a stroke by motoric training, and the other taking amphetamines, you usually see an significant increase in motoric skill again, whereas the group taking amphetamines at best does not become better, often even loses motoric coordination ( my status of knowledge on that is early 90s). However, this goes more into the field of medical research and not so much psychology, and my memories certainly are not up to date since I don't deal with these things anymore.

The English Spiegel essay mentions Dr. Pfleger (hey, I learned chess a second of three times with one of his books!), who in 1979 tried beta-blockers in a match against Spasski, and tried beta-blockers to help reducing heartrate and blood pressure, es the essay mentions; in pro matches it could reach to a heartrate of 160 and a blood pressure of 200, which are critical values comparing to the physical stress a classical athlete may reach during physical performance (chess is no sports, but you need sport and fitness to bare the physical stress from it, it compares a bit to motor sports). Over 20% of all the body'S energy is consumed by the brain at rest, I don't know how high it goes when playing chess on a pro level, but I do know that in the long world championships against Kasparov where they played up to several dozen matches, or in lang-lasting 2-3 week tournaments, Karpov sometimes lost up to 10-12 kilos in weight.

Now Dr. Pfleger said his "play fell apart" when he artificially reduced blood pressure and heart rate.

From university some of you may know some people who took drugs like the mentioned Ritalin, which is an Amphetamine, or more precisely it is Methylphenidat (german term). The drug is used for example to calm hyper-active children (ADD=attention deficit disorder, a lack of ability to mentally focus, and being constantly hyper-active), which I consider to be highly questionable 1.) for the sake of the purpose itself, and 2.) because the calming effect is a paradox effect which is not properly understood: why hyper-active kids calm down when taking this amphetamine (people use it to stimulate themselves), we cannot completely explain. It is assumed that it affects the Dopamin level in the brain, Dopamin is a neurotransmitter and Methylphendiate affects the speed by which Dopamin is recyled in the synapses, it blocks them. Since Dopamin also is a pre-stage of Adrenaline and Noradrenaline, lack of it affects the balance between rest and fight-or-flight (activity). but you see already that the information here already is apparently contradictory, and thus I say the effects of this Ritalin are sometimes paradox, sometimes not, and they are certainly not thoroughly understood (that'S why I consider it to be a bad idea to mess around with your neurotransmitter levels in your brain as long as you do not really suffer).

And some students you may have known, who took Retalin in preparation for exams and to fight their fears (if they misunderstood the drug), or to "wake up" mentally, this paradox effect eventually casted the opposite of the desired effect upon them. I once read that the US army also has some kind of limitations or total refuse for people having a record with this or similiar drugs. Needless to say that it has many side-effects as well. So, although Ritalin and similar drugs are being tested for in chess anti doping, the use of such substances in chess is questionable at best, and very unpredictable. What Pfleger said for beta-blockers, could be true for Amphetamines as well: considering to use them may already fail because you are unable to predict the effect, and find the correct dosis, a dosis which also may vary with changing physical conditions of your body from day to day.

Finally, chemically increasing the overall level of neurologic firing, must not necessarily make you a better player. It is not completely different to CPU speed, maybe, where calculation time needed increases not linear but exponential the greater calculation depth is. It makes a big difference whether the CPU has 3 or 15 seconds, but it makes less a difference if the gap is that between 15 and 1 minute 15 seconds, and it causes even less effect if you have 2 or 10 minutes calculation time for the CPU. While the human mind certainly plays chess different than a machine that calculates all moves possible (more or less) while the human recognises patterns and filters out most moves from the very beginning, I still fail to imagine that a neural activity increase of lets say 20% over the normal maximum activity level would give a human the egde over his opponent, or would boost his playing strength in a significant way. After all, chess is not only calculation, but very very much knowledge, experience, and pattern recognition ability - and this is to be developed before you go into a tournament - not during the match.

[Hylander_1314]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Anything that has to be judged isn't really a competition. I think chess is more olympian that those others.

But it's not physical at all, is it?

Depends if the pieces are real on a field of battle, or static on a board of squares.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Thanks Sky

Sorry you had to type so much.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Thanks Sky

Sorry you had to type so much.

Ha, as a payback you get all those typos and grammar faults for free!

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by 1480

If they are attempting to make chess into an Olympic sport (I might have missed something) heaven help us all......

Why are you surprised by this turn of events ?

Tell me if this list makes any sense at all (all olympic sports):

Air sports
Bandy
Baseball
Billiard sports
Boules
Bowling
Bridge
Chess
Climbing
Cricket
DanceSport Golf
Karate
Korfball
Lifesaving
Motorcycle sport
Netball
Orienteering
Pelote Basque
Polo
Powerboating
Racquetball Roller sports
Rugby
Softball
Squash
Sumo
Surfing
Tug of war
Underwater sports
Water skiing
Wushu

I would eliminate 90% of that list. But of course we live in a society where everything is driven by the god-$. So you get the most improbable sponsorships and the entry into the olympic sports category.