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

[Chris Rice]

Have to say I'm more than a little concerned that this article has turned up on ChessBase arguing that certain drugs may improve your chess. The article is based on a Stockholm University study which did a trial to see whether methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine actually increased cognitive enhancement in chess and the results seem to show that there is some basis for this. However, this is just one trial and a relatively small sampling at that. Unfortunately there are kids out there that will believe that this works without questioning it and they won't bother troubling themselves over the possible side effects and dependency. Anyway an interesting article nonetheless. http://en.chessbase.com/post/proven-per ... -for-chess

[NickFaulks]

Don't we know all we need to about this gentleman's journalism?

[Roger de Coverly]

Have to say I'm more than a little concerned that this article has turned up on ChessBase arguing that certain drugs may improve your chess.

Pitch a Fritz user against a Ritalin user, who do you think comes out ahead?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Don't we know all we need to about this gentleman's journalism?

not to mention Chessbase’s propensity to publish any old shite.

[Kevin Thurlow]

I had a look at the paper and it's interesting. Much as it pains me to comment on scientific matters without being paid, here is some info. I worked in chemical safety for some time.

Background - own searches

Methylphenidate (aka Ritalin) is commonly used in treatment of ADHD, i.e. calming down stroppy children. It may impair thought processes, and frequently causes skin irritation (maybe 10 % of cases), sometimes headaches, and it is suspected of causing genetic effects. More importantly it is an appetite suppressant. If you give it to children, it could stunt their growth. It is addictive. I must add at this point, that methylphenidate has been around for more than 50 years, and drug companies are careful to record all reported side-effects. So if someone takes a drug and ten pints of strong lager and then feels ill, the drug company will record that the drug is "suspected" of caused vomiting etc. If more people report the same, it "may" cause... It is prohibited by WADA. (World Anti-Doping Agency - who have a difficult to use website.) It is prescription only.

Modafinil is a bit newer, but has still been around a long time. It can cause psychiatric symptoms, more usual are headache, skin irritation, gastro-intestinal disturbances. It is not approved for use with children. Also prohibited by WADA. The trial used double the normal dose. It is prescription only.

Caffeine is well-known, it can cause headaches, irritation, gastro-intestinal disturbances, etc. WADA cannot make their mind up about this, their threshold when it was banned was about double the dose given in the trial.

The Trial

This was carried out on 18 - 60 year-olds, who were paid 400 Euros each. Fritz 12 was used, set at such a level that the expected score for each player was 0.5. Each participant was given methylphenidate, modafinil, caffeine or placebo.

Average scores and time taken for the game were as follows:-

Score Time in seconds
Placebo 0.510 437
Modafinil 0.552 553
Methylphenidate 0.542 547
Caffeine 0.543 530

These figures are certainly interesting - it does show that you get better results if you think longer about the moves! There were losses on time though as players started to think for too long.

About 25 % participants (non-placebo) reported headaches and most on modafinil reported difficulty sleeping (much more than those on caffeine).

I would not recommend taking large doses of the drugs in the trial. Caffeine is the safest one and you don't want to overdo that either!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I would not recommend taking large doses of the drugs in the trial. Caffeine is the safest one and you don't want to overdo that either!

I imagine this news story had you running around the room screaming?

Northumbria University 'life-threatening' caffeine test fine

A university has been fined after two students suffered "life-threatening" effects when they were given 100 times too much caffeine in an experiment. [...] The calculation had been done on a mobile phone, with the decimal point in the wrong place, and there was no risk assessment.

[Michael Farthing]

Sample size, Kevin?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I imagine this news story had you running around the room screaming?

Northumbria University 'life-threatening' caffeine test fine"

er, yes. Don't take part in trials run by idiots.

"Sample size, Kevin?"

There were only 39 people this time - I was basing my comment on safety on the literature sources dating back many years, and current CLP classifications. The three drugs are only "Harmful if swallowed", which is a question of scale. Many pharmaceuticals are "toxic if swallowed" but if the dose is only (say) 25 mg a time, they're quite safe.

I do wonder if/when there will be great public excitement over the use of Methylphenidate.

The problem with the Chessbase report is that people might look at their inexpert summary and think, "oh good, I'll play better if I take this stuff." Too many people die (or do themselves serious damage) from taking drugs, including what used to be called legal highs.

I just wanted to suggest that this isn't a great idea!

[AustinElliott]

Caffeine is a well-known 'cognitive enhancer', so its reported effects reported are no surprise. Indeed, it's a standing joke in neuroscience that, whenever someone makes exaggerated claims for some new drug or concoction (see e.g. 'smart drinks') as a cognitive enhancer, someone else will eventually quip:

You mean... it might be about half as good as caffeine? <..............affects mock surprise>

Modafinil is an 'attention improving' drug, supposedly now widely used by the US military whenever they might previously have used amphetamines (keeping people awake and alert on long missions). Kevin Thurlow already gave the b/g on methylphenidate (Ritalin), which is a 're-purposed' amphetamine, hence its appetite-suppressing effects.

It's hardly a great surprise that your play in a chess game likely relates to how well you manage, on the day or night, to stay awake, concentrate and focus. I suspect most 'ordinary' players find this varies a lot depending on all sorts of things, like whether the dog kept you awake all night barking, or whether you have a lot on at work, or whether someone is coughing incessantly two boards down. Anyway, I would bet the influence of these things likely outweigh any (modest) effect of the drugs. Like Kevin, I hope no-one is silly enough to think this article offers any way to improve your play other than (if you're a coffee drinker) bringing a thermos flask or a nice double expresso.

Talking of which, didn't Petrosian bring a thermos flask of coffee to games with him? Any other well-known players with an in-game coffee habit?

[MartinCarpenter]

Lots of them I would imagine. A huge chunk of the population is fairly well addicted to caffeine

As I remember Botvinnik purposefully took it up to help his concentration later on in his career?

[Kevin Thurlow]

Having read the paper again, it seems that the 39 participants (1 dropped out) were divided into 4 groups, and firstly given one of the 4 test materials, then a week later given a different test material, then a week later another different material, and then a week later the one they had not had. So all participants took each of the test materials. This is unusual for trials of this sort.

So you might ask if the mixture of materials might have an effect. It seems unlikely as all of them are eliminated from the body fairly quickly. Losses on time were ignored, if you include those, the enhanced performance would not be as great.

They also tested the players on "Tower of Hanoi" (six-ring), which is interesting, as I thought that once you knew the pattern, you would probably solve it every time?

[Mick Norris]

Don't we know all we need to about this gentleman's journalism?

not to mention Chessbase’s propensity to publish any old shite.

Indeed, will be interesting to see the coverage of Agon losing their appeal about the Moscow Candidates chess24.com

[AustinElliott]

Having read the paper again, it seems that the 39 participants (1 dropped out) were divided into 4 groups, and firstly given one of the 4 test materials, then a week later given a different test material, then a week later another different material, and then a week later the one they had not had. So all participants took each of the test materials.

This is a 'crossover' trial design, sometimes used in treatment/drug testing. Not used that often, as obviously it takes longer than different-groups-each-get-only-one-treatment. However, it is a good feature here, as it would potentially help control for both (i) the players in the groups accidentally being of different abilities, so (say) group A has better players than group B; and (ii) the fact that all players are arguably going to improve at rapid games over the 4 weeks, as they are getting plenty of practise.

So you might ask if the mixture of materials might have an effect. It seems unlikely as all of them are eliminated from the body fairly quickly. Losses on time were ignored, if you include those, the enhanced performance would not be as great.

I guess the half-lives for elimination are known. Do they discuss this? Can't imagine making a caffeine fiend give up caffeine would be easy..! Were the participants allowed to drink coffee 'normally'?

Ignoring losses on time is interesting. Given that one is more likely to lose on time in a losing position, that seems a noticeable flaw in their study design.

Guess I might actually have to dig out the study and have a proper look.

[David Shepherd]

From the link in the article http://www.europeanneuropsychopharmacol ... 6/abstract the abstract is as follow: "Stimulants and caffeine have been proposed for cognitive enhancement by healthy subjects. This study investigated whether performance in chess – a competitive mind game requiring highly complex cognitive skills – can be enhanced by methylphenidate, modafinil or caffeine. In a phase IV, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 39 male chess players received 2×200 mg modafinil, 2×20 mg methylphenidate, and 2×200 mg caffeine or placebo in a 4×4 crossover design. They played twenty 15-minute games during two sessions against a chess program (Fritz 12; adapted to players’ strength) and completed several neuropsychological tests. Marked substance effects were observed since all three substances significantly increased average reflection time per game compared to placebo resulting in a significantly increased number of games lost on time with all three treatments. Treatment effects on chess performance were not seen if all games (n=3059) were analysed. Only when controlling for game duration as well as when excluding those games lost on time, both modafinil and methylphenidate enhanced chess performance as demonstrated by significantly higher scores in the remaining 2876 games compared to placebo. In conjunction with results from neuropsychological testing we conclude that modifying effects of stimulants on complex cognitive tasks may in particular result from more reflective decision making processes. When not under time pressure, such effects may result in enhanced performance. Yet, under time constraints more reflective decision making may not improve or even have detrimental effects on complex task performance."

I think one of the key parts is highlighted in bold. It seems that the drugs slow down response time, but when the response is made it is better. This is a pattern that I suspect all chess players will recognise, although the moves where you spent a long time only to blunder stick in the mind more.

Overall though it is unclear to me if the response is better than if it had been made without the drugs but with the same amount of time used. There is clearly a judgement to be made as to how long to analyse a move, and a trade off between time used and the accuracy of the move. Overall the study seems to show that the drugs have no impact on the final result over this time limit, but do impact on the judgement of how long to spend on an individual moves.

[Ian Thompson]

Overall though it is unclear to me if the response is better than if it had been made without the drugs but with the same amount of time used. There is clearly a judgement to be made as to how long to analyse a move, and a trade off between time used and the accuracy of the move.

Perhaps you could investigate this sort of thing using problems and studies - does using the drugs improve a player's ability to solve them, or affect the time taken to do so?