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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!'"
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Did anyone think that a chess tournament between 16 people could easily take longer than the olympics to complete? Either that, our you're going to have to tighten up the time rules...
Seriously, seing as they usually play multi-game matches, and I've heard of many matches over the course of, say, 8 hours or more, couldn't this stretch out??
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I'd say that if you have hung out with a chess team, Linux User Groups, D&D players, and by god, Magic The Gathering players, you have no right to be calling someone else poorly socialized.
BilldaCat
And as others have pointed out, there's more than just steroids that can be used to improve performance. Imagine a drug that can be used to simply keep the mind more alert for a longer period of time (the side effect being the need to sleep for several days afterwards to make up for it). I would surmise that a chess player that has taken such a drug would fair better than one that hasn't considering the length of some chess matches.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the banned substances are chosen on a sport by sport basis. Therefore, perhaps steroids would be allowed for chess. Just not some concentration-enchancing drug. Or rather, the IOC has a certain set of standards, and the individual sports have others.
Canadian Olympic Snowboarder Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana use. The IOC has no minimum amount set for marijuana use, but the Internation Ski Federation did...
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...
I just wonder how long till they decide to let big blue play. Only problem would be figuring out how to get a urine sample from a super computer.
You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson: never try.
'He's using steroids to move that pawn!'
Nooo.... They're overclocking Deep Blue!
I was gonna play some chess, but then I got high, I was gonna play with the olympic best, but then i got high now i'm just sittin here I must confess, and I know why-- hey hey because I got high, because I got high, because I got high....
Damn. Drugs are about the only thing that makes chess interesting.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
Ignore the "Chess Isn't a Sport" arguements. That does not matter to the IOC. What matters is that chess is not TV friendly. The IOC cares more about ratings than anything else.
posted by an irrate fencer, a sport that is in danger of being cut because we aren't "TV Friendly".
W
Actually, just today on NPR they discussed a research study that suggested that many Master and Grandmaster level chess players are using a part of the brain completely unused in the average player. The conclusion drawn by this researcher and study was that your average person is incapible due to his brain structure to become a Grandmaster.
Now while I don't agree with that, since it's been proven that different experiences can help develop the functioning of different parts of the brain, and I would imagine thousands of games of chess in childhood would warp anyone's brain... anyway, there's a point here somewhere.
The point I'm trying to make is that just because you someone may think differently, it's an amazingly concieted assumption to make to assume that it's "stupid".
And no, I can barely keep the names of the pieces right, I'm not a chess fanatic.
If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games. Instead of allowing the Commission to be very judgemental in what they allow, it'd make better sense for a mental Olympics to be wholly created outside of the existing Games, IMHO.
Of course, they can't ban cofee.. can they?
In many sports, there are strict limits for caffeine. It's possible to get busted in tests just by drinking too much coffee. Usually 300-500mg of caffeine pushes you above the limit (12mg of caffeine in 1l of urine). Since there is usually 40-60mg of caffeine in one cup of coffee, 10 cups of coffee would be too much.
When you smile, the world laughs at you.
The society we live in has put a higher premium on the mental skills, that's what is going on.
To grok this we need to go back to the original Greco-Roman games. The games were feats of athletic skill and battle strategy, which were definitely essential survival skills during those days.
Today, while these skills are still important, the mental aspect of strategy and tactics has become far more important.
When a panoply of technologies can deter even the largest crowd (audio detterence technology, microwaves meant to temporarily blind people mounted on tanks are all part of the "nonlethal" arsenal) the controllers of these technologies are at the crux of social decisions.
The Int'l Olympic Committee is supposed to consider the social relationships of the Games, their deeper meaning, etc. along with all the cash and entertainment values of the Games. Perhaps, by adding chess, this social value is their primary consideration.
(It certainly won't add any entertainment or monetary value to the Games!)
Goat sex free since 2001
The funniest thing about your comment won't be understood by most people. Most people probably don't know who BilldaCat is. Some of us remember.
And even fewer of us probably remember, and still celebrate, "Chad is Bad" day.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Massive ratings?....of course not...but SOME ratings if they actually got televised, sure. :) Of course, the number of actual events that get televised during the Olympics currently is absurd. Basically, it must have an American in it, and look very dynamically interesting. When was the last time you saw Table Tennis or Fencing or Judo or hammer throw or any of the other gazillion events televised?
I can see the TV audiences for the 'mental olympics' being HUGE!
I'll put my money on the U.S. "crack team" any day of the week. We're #1!!!
:)
- Robin
PS - how would they handle drug testing for the crack team?
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...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...