New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess By Dylan Loeb McClain

[Joey Stewart]

One major omission I spotted was nicotine - I've had numerous games against opponents who seem to be really struggling with the position, nip out for a quick smoke, and return completely calm and collected playing far better moves then before...

I would have liked to have seen that tested in a study of non addicts, to know for sure whether it is just the desperation of needing it breaking their concentration or whether it does endow them with magical chess playing powers.

[MartinCarpenter]

You'd have to be very careful to split the effect of the smoking out from that of simply getting away from the board, giving your brain a break, walking - which for some people can really help thought processes etc etc......

[Brian Towers]

One major omission I spotted was nicotine - I've had numerous games against opponents who seem to be really struggling with the position, nip out for a quick smoke, and return completely calm and collected playing far better moves then before...

Indeed. Or the consumption of energy bars / drinks. I was one of the arbiters at a children's event last year when, after young Johnny lost one game, his coach / parent stuffed an energy bar into the child's mouth with the comment that he'd lost because his blood sugar level was too low. Detecting a possibly disapproving look from me he added "We'll worry about the obesity / type 2 diabetes issues later". That comment and this article reflect a complete lack of proportion.

None of this compares to something like anabolic steroids or human growth hormone in more physical sports. I'm not asking you to get back to me when these chess performance enhancers will help me reach the candidates match. Just let me know when drinking more coffee will help me to a GM title or even an IM title.

Where is the research into the time spent studying chess properly (as opposed to playing online, browsing chess internet sites like this one and watching livestreams of big events) by players of various standards from weak club player through to super GM? Where is the comparison of how players of different levels spend their study time? What about a comparison of their lifestyles - alcohol consumption, smoking, sleep patterns, diet, exercise, routine, etc. and how it affected their play over the years? That would be a lot more useful, although "Top players get there by dint of years of bloody hard work - shock! horror!" isn't exactly a catchy headline.

The article is clearly just click-bait. There are some excellent observations in the comments, particularly from an MD called joshuar who points out, quite rightly, that the post facto selection of results that took place is not science.

[Roger Lancaster]

I'm with those who don't find the results obviously significant. My main reservation revolves around the fact that, over all 3,059 games, there was no clear improvement. It was only when games lost on time were eliminated that the remaining 2,876 demonstrated the "improvement". The logic behind excluding the time-losses is dubious, to put it no more strongly - if a statistician says, "If I exclude 5% of the survey results which don't fit in with my hypothesis then the remaining 95% strongly support that hypothesis", one has to ask whether he or she is being selective as to which data he or she is using.