Drug Testing For Olympic Chess Players?

Lawrence Person writes: "According to this AP wire story, they're thinking of adding chess as an Olympic sport. The downside? Mandatory drug testing. 'He's using steroids to move that pawn!'"

Comments

You Betcha

[sjbe]

I'm around medical students quite a lot. Now if you've ever seen what medical students have to learn, it involves huge amounts of memorization and studying upwards of 12-18 hours per day (including classes) much of the time. Obviously unless you are some freak of nature you cannot concentrate effectively for that long. (yes this includes programmers too...)

I have numerous 2nd and 3rd hand accounts of the use of some prescription drugs (including ritalin) being used to aid concentration during long study sessions. (Obvously it isn't hard for medical personnel to get them or to know the side effects.) How widespread this practice is or how effective it is, I have no idea but it does appear to happen and apparently to some degree.

Maybe that's why I was never a curve wrecker in college. Everyone else was doping... Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket...

Re:Chess - A stupid game for stupid people.

[scharkalvin]

I. Asimov disliked most of the members of mesna for similar reasons (he became a member, but for a long time never attended because he couldn't stand being with these people).

But not all chess players are like that. I worked with someone who was a member of the chess federation. That is he had a ranking (low as it was).

Some people would say that being able to hack computers takes a special kind of mental skill. I guess any group of people can sink to snoberism, and yet another group of similar people will rise above it. There are assholes in any group.

Performance drugs for chess? Sure...

[glebite]

How about Ritalin or some other drug to improve concentration skills. What about some kind of coolness-under-fire drugs to block out the pressure? Are there drugs that won't 'zombify' a person, but keep them focused?

Just asking...