Proven: Performance-enhancing drugs for chess

by ChessBase
1/25/2017 – It is the first time that drugs have been found under rigorous scientific conditions to improve chess performance. The results of the ground-breaking study have been published in a leading scientific journal. The drugs are methylphenidate, which is most commonly marketed as Ritalin, and modafinil, which is sold as Alertec, Modavigil and Provigil. They improved the players’ performances by an average of 13 and 15 percent, while caffeine, which also has an ameliorative impact, improved it by around nine percent. Report in WorldChess.com.

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New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess

By Dylan Loeb McClain

Since 1999, the World Chess Federation, which is also as known as FIDE, has had scorn regularly heaped on it for having a drug testing policy and for testing top players at major events. The federation did not put the policy in place because it believed it had a drug problem, but to satisfy the International Olympic Committee, which requires that all sports that it recognizes have such a program.

The idea that chess might one day be in the Olympics continues to seem like a pipe-dream, but it turns out that testing for drugs may have been a prescient move. A landmark study published in European Neuropsychopharmacology, the official publication of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, has found that there are two prescription drugs that seem to enhance chess-playing ability.

Abstract: Methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine for cognitive enhancement in chess: A double-blind, randomised controlled trial

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.

The drugs are methylphenidate, which is most commonly marketed as Ritalin (by Novartis), and modafinil, which is sold as Alertec, Modavigil and Provigil. The study also measured the effects of caffeine and found, not surprisingly, that it also had an ameliorative impact.

When adjusting for an unexpected side-effect of the drugs on decision-making behavior – paradoxically, that they made the subjects play slower — the study found modafinil improved the players’ performances by an average of 15 percent, methylphenidate by 13 percent, and caffeine by around 9 percent.

The results would seem to pose an immediate challenge for FIDE and for tournament organizers around the world. Cheating by using high-powered computers has become a problem in recent years, with even some top-level players being caught. Now, if the results of this study are borne out, players could use a chemical means that is invisible to the eye to boost their performance.

The new study, which was conducted by 13 professors and researchers from several German universities and the University of Stockholm, is titled, “Methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine for cognitive enhancement in chess: A double-blind, randomized controlled trial.”

Methylphenidate and modafinil have been around for years – in the case of methylphenidate, since the early 1960s. Both are stimulants. Methylphenidate is commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), while modafinil is often used for narcolepsy and other sleep-related disorders.

Dr. Klaus Lieb, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Mainz in Germany, and one of the study’s main authors, said that the researchers wanted to see whether people who already were performing at a high level mentally could have their performance enhanced through chemicals.

“There are lots of data showing that a subject in a sleep-deficient state or exhausted people do profit from an enhancer,” Dr. Lieb said. “We were really interested to show whether it is possible to show an enhancement effect, or a hyper performance effect in subjects who already perform at the top level of their cognitive performance.”

Dr. Lieb said that the researchers went into the study with the expectation that the stimulants would not show much benefit. “We primarily thought that it is not possible to enhance high cognitive tasks and were astonished to find such results,” he said.

Chess players were chosen as the subjects in part because several of the researchers play. (Harold Ballo, who works with Dr. Lieb, has a FIDE rating of 1981.) In addition, the fact that computers could be used as sparring partners and their strengths calibrated to equal that of the subjects made chess an ideal laboratory.

The study recruited 39 rated players (40 when it began, but one dropped out). Each player was given a series of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires and then asked to play against computers running the chess-playing program Fritz 12. In their games, the players had 15 minutes total for their moves, the computers had six. Before each set of 10 games, the players were given either methylphenidate, modafinil, caffeine, or a placebo. In total, 3,059 games were played over a several-week period.

The results contained one surprise: The amount of time that the players took in their games when they were on the stimulants increased, so much so that more games were lost on time when players were taking the drugs than when they had taken a placebo. That skewed the results. When those losses were factored out, leaving 2,876 games (or data points) the benefits of the drugs became clearer.

The study’s conclusion addressed the additional thinking time as a critical component of the effect of the stimulants. The authors wrote, “This suggests that neuroenhancers do not enhance the quality of thinking and decision-making per time unit but improve the players’ ability or willingness to spend more time on a decision and hence to perform more thorough calculations.”

Dr. Lieb said that there are two caveats to the results. One is that they must be replicated by additional studies before it would be possible to say with some degree of certainty that the drugs enhance performance.

The second was that the study contained a flaw: the games were too quick, creating the problem of time-forfeits in some games. Additional studies would need to have the subjects play longer games.

That also suggests that if the drugs do turn out to definitely be performance-enhancers, they would be most useful in classical, or slow, tournament games rather than in rapid or particularly blitz games.

It is possible that some players already use these drugs. As part of the research for the new study, Dr. Lieb said that he and his colleagues contacted 1,500 players in the German federation and had them fill out surveys. Based on those surveys, he said that they had some idea of the prevalence of the two drugs among the chess-playing population. Dr. Lieb would not reveal the results as he said they hope to interest another scientific journal in publishing them.

Dr. Lieb cautioned that while the drugs seem to boost performance, taking them was not a good idea. “Their use may cause severe side effects and dependency, especially with repeated use,” he said.

Dr. Lieb was clear on one effect he thought the research should have. He said, “We recommend to introduce rigorous doping controls in chess competitions.”

The above article is reproduced from the news page of WorldChess and reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

Dylan Loeb McClain is a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He was a staff editor for The New York Times for 18 years and wrote the paper’s chess column from 2006 to 2014. He is now editor-in-chief of WorldChess.com. He is a FIDE master as well.

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Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 08:23
mrburns123 All of the results scores were not in paper, just summaries, which was sufficient for the presentation of the analysis and conclusions. It did not occur to me to ask for that level of detail; I was more concerned with making sure that I understood the methodology, interpretations, conclusions, etc., of the study. Perhaps that was an error on my part. As for how much of an improvement that represents in Elo, a very good question that I do not have the answer to, unfortunately. Perhaps someone else in this forum can help out. It is certainly part of the rating calculator formula.
A7fecd1676b88 A7fecd1676b88 1/25/2017 08:22
"The second was that the study contained a flaw: the games were too quick, creating the problem of time-forfeits in some games. Additional studies would need to have the subjects play longer games."

15 minute games are a valid time control, not a flaw... What if we use 20 minutes instead? Well, after 5 minutes, we are at 15 minutes again. Or a 90 minute game...eventually, many 90 minute games will reach your "too quick" status.

A little advice for Lieb...if you want to be taken seriously, do the experiment for 1 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute, 15 minute, 30 minute, 60 minute, and 120 minute games and see what you get. Then do the exact same experiments for 1 cup of coffee, 2 cups of coffee, etc., and compare. What you have right now is nothing.
mrburns123 mrburns123 1/25/2017 08:19
@Bertman
I was questioning the increase in percent, not the score in percent. That going from a 50% score to a 58% score is an increase by 15% is not all that obvious, unless the increase is properly defined.

I just think that if the article explained how much ELO that would roughly equal to, the readers would have had an easier understanding on how much the performance boost was.
rgorn rgorn 1/25/2017 08:15
Caffeine: +9%, methylphenidate +13%, and modafinil +15%. Either this prescription only stuff is highly overrated, or caffeine is highly underrated. Or (most likely) all numbers are void of any meaning whatsoever.
mrburns123 mrburns123 1/25/2017 08:10
@Dylan McClain
Thanks for the answer.
Sorry, I must have missed the explanation about the difficulty setting.
I think some result-tables of the chess games would have been helpful to explain the results better. Something like players scored 30% losses, 40% draws and 30% wins without modafinil and so on.
After all, the readers here are mostly chessplayers, I'd assume they care about the numbers.

As for "... this would all be familiar to you", sure. But as a journalist, it's your job to explain this stuff to the readers, no? If I already knew these things, I wouldn't need to read articles about it.

So going from 50% to 58% against an opponent with the same rating would be +60 ELO, if I'm not mistaken.
Bertman Bertman 1/25/2017 08:03
@mrburns123

All chess results are measured in percentages. What do you think Elo ratings are? They are relative scores based on your expected results (percentages) against other Elo ratings up or down the ladder. Tournament performance ratings in the FIDE handbook are measured accoridng to... you guessed it... percentages. You might find this article interesting:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-name-of-the-game-is-domination
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 07:55
A7fecd1676b88 It is fine to disagree if we are operating from the same starting point -- the same acknowledged and mutually agreed on set of facts. We are not. You don't know anything about the study or what happened. So you are making assumptions about the study, the biases of the professors and the researchers and the data. Sorry to say, but you are assuming alternate facts. Those are not facts.

I am not sure why so many people are having such a violent negative reaction to this study. As I pointed out, even the authors are being cautious about the definitiveness of the results. While the results of this one study are fairly clear, they themselves say that they hope others will come along and create new studies and test and retest to see if the results hold up. If people don't think this is possible that is what should happen: new and additional studies. Then we may get a better, more comprehensive picture.
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 07:48
mrburns123. The 15 percent represented each player's performance in terms of results against the computer. To wit, if the player and the computer drew every game, or if a player won half the games and lost the other half, or any other possible combination like that, the player scored 50 percent against the computer. When the players were on modafinil, their rate of scoring against the computer improved, on average, by 15 percent. That is their rate of scoring improved to 57 or 58 percent. As to how they did this, if you had read the article, or knew anything about Fritz, the program was adjusted to play at each player's published ELO rating. So if the player was rated 1980, the computer was set to play at the same level. Since each player played against the computer at that set level, whether the player was on the enhancers or not (but of course did not know) the researchers also got to see if the settings on the computer were accurate. Indeed, they were, as when the players were not playing on any enhancers (and, again, they did not know since they also took placebos), they scored almost exactly at 50 percent -- the expected outcome. If you had ever read articles about chess talking about scoring rates, this would all be familiar to you.
A7fecd1676b88 A7fecd1676b88 1/25/2017 07:41
@Dylan McClain -- We will have to agree to disagree.
mrburns123 mrburns123 1/25/2017 07:37
I see that the author has an FM title, so he does know about chess.
But then I would have expected more questioning of the methods used to measure this improvement in percent. For example, if I have 2000 ELO now, how much would I have after 15% increase, as the study suggests?
mrburns123 mrburns123 1/25/2017 07:29
Since when is chess performance measured in percent? What does it mean to play "15% better"?
The fact that the above article doesn't question this increase in percent with a single word, shows that the author probably doesn't know much about chess either.
Fritz 12 has more than 2900 ELO, so I'd assume that the players lost all their games, unless they were grandmasters. So if you go from 0 points to 0 points, that indeed is an increase by 15% or any random percentage for that matter.

Also how do they go from "using more time per move" to "playing better"? If I'm tired, I might use more time per move also, but I don't think I'd play better.

Unfortunately it costs 35.95$ to read the study, so I'm not going to do that.
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 07:28
A7fecd1676b88 The effects were seen even if the losses were included (read my earlier comments) but fell within two standard deviations, which therefore falls below the threshold of statistically significant. The authors, most of whom have zero interest in or knowledge of chess, were being cautious. The journal is the top in Europe in its field, it is not fly by night. The peer review process was so stringent, publication was held up for more than a year. And as Dr. Lieb said, they expected the OPPOSITE result. They went in with one hypotheses and had it disproved by the results and the data. That suggests exceptional open-mindedness.
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 07:23
rgorn. Your sarcastic comments aside, there were two points that are critical in this paper, which even though you may not care about, others will. One, there are prescription drugs that do seem to boost performance -- more than caffeine. PEDs are something that some people in the world care about. (If some players are taking prescription drugs and others are not, is that fair?) Second, beyond the impact on chess, this is the first rigorous study to show that people who are at their peak -- not fatigued, performing at their best -- can have their abilities boosted by chemical supplements. That has a potentially far-reaching consequences, which has nothing to do with chess. So, yes, even if you don't understand or can't appreciate it, this is important. Obviously, some of the smartest minds in medicine and research agreed, which is why it was published.

It is funny, but in this day and age, when anyone can get on the Internet and type whatever comes into their heads and feel free, at least in some cases, to discount actual knowledge and facts, people seem empowered to spout off whatever nonsense they want. I would say we live in a dangerous age when the actual accumulation of knowledge and information is disparaged and degraded.
A7fecd1676b88 A7fecd1676b88 1/25/2017 07:21
@ Giddy -- You are quite correct. They must include the losses on time…at which point we read their comment: "Treatment effects on chess performance were not seen if all games (n=3059) were analysed.”

@rgorn -- Correct!

@Dylan McClain -- Many chess players have an academic and scientific background, even if they prefer to earn their livings in more lucrative fields. These clowns fudged the data. Peer reviewed you say? And you know it was peer reviewed (pal reviewed!) exactly how? A paper sometime is read only read by the authors and the referee.
So here we have a paper on chess that is submitted to a chess site, and the enthusiast chess players tell them the methodology was crap. This is a valid form of review.
rgorn rgorn 1/25/2017 07:09
@Dylan McClain: No, I am taking this very seriously. I've even distilled an advice for coffee drinkers from your article:

Don't drink coffee during your game. You either loose on time or you are defaulted after your opponent brings it to the attention of the arbiter that you've had at least four cups of coffee over the course of the game and that it has been scientifically proven that this enhances ones chess performance by 9%. (Opponent shows arbiter a copy of the paper as proof.)
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 06:19
rgorn. I'm sorry, but are you a scientist or an expert? Have you read the study? Perhaps you should look at the credentials of the authors that you are insulting before you criticize. Or are you just a troll?
Dylan McClain Dylan McClain 1/25/2017 06:16
To all those focused on the losses on time being excluded, there are two important points. First, even including those losses, the players showed enhanced performance, just not as enhanced and within the range of deviation where the results could, not would, but could possibly be accounted for by anomalies. Second, statistical analysis and accepted scientific methods, verified by the peer review, confirmed that results that excluded the losses were meaningful. In addition, the chess results were not the only analysis performed on the subjects -- there were cognitive and physiological tests which confirmed the heightened cognitive performance. Now, from our perspective, all we care about is results, and losses count, on time or not on time. But it was clear from the test results in the study that if the subjects had had a bit more time more commensurate witht he time in a normal tournament game, the performance would have been within the range cited in the article.
rgorn rgorn 1/25/2017 06:13
Posers they are, both this Dr. Lieb and the writer of this article. Four cups of coffee (400 mg of caffeine) will boost your chess performance by 9%? Didn't know that caffeine is such a highly potent drug. By the way: how much Elo is this per cup of coffee?

A simple plausibility check should have prevented the publication of this nonsense.
Chessspawnvt Chessspawnvt 1/25/2017 06:05
@turok Clearly, you haven't taken your Ritalin today........:-)
Chessspawnvt Chessspawnvt 1/25/2017 06:04
Judging from the survey of German league players, it's clear that these medications work. This study is simply confirmatory. I suspect that future studies will simply confirm and further detail the effects. They are also quite popular among university students for enhancing focus and increasing performance during exams. As DuPont used to advertise, "Better living through chemistry."
turok turok 1/25/2017 06:03
this is stupid
Chessspawnvt Chessspawnvt 1/25/2017 06:00
These meds don't generally affect sleep patterns. You time the taking of them so that they are out of your system before it's time for bed.
Petrarlsen Petrarlsen 1/25/2017 05:52
I think the results would be much more significant if a time-increment was used.

The most interesting would probably be to use a 30 s. time increment (clearly the most usual increment in classical games), which would ensure the results not to be influenced by a strong time pressure.

And, with such an increment, it would be in my opinion completely illogical to exclude games lost on time from the study (a loss on time is a loss, and if your time management is worsened by the use of a substance, it is clearly a negative effect on your intellectual performances, so it must also be taken into account).
boorchess boorchess 1/25/2017 05:14
The study also does not take into consideration the need for a player to perform across the stretch of several days as is the case in the typical chess tournament. These drugs affect sleep patterns which is more important than a chemical boost for long term results.
AgainAgain AgainAgain 1/25/2017 05:08
Makes zero sense to exclude games lost on time. Next time they will do a study on long distance running and exclude all the results where the competitors couldn't finish the race...
Chessspawnvt Chessspawnvt 1/25/2017 05:00
@mdamien Don't know that chess will help ADHD, but I've worked with kids who have Asperger's who when at the board settle in and become quite focused and calm. I had a third grader with Asperger's who won his first tournament and stood up with his trophy and declared (at not the most appropriate moment) that he owed his trophy to two things, me and the book he held up, Chess for Dummies.
Giddy Giddy 1/25/2017 04:59
For all practical purposes, losing a game on time is equal to losing by resignation or mate. Thus, it seems unfair to exclude losses on time in analyses of the results of the drugs on chess performance. I think the statement that 'the benefits of the drugs became clearer' when certain losses were excluded from the analyses is misleading.

If taking these drugs would improve your play but make you lose on time more often, that could mean they have a net negative effect on chess permance.
Chessspawnvt Chessspawnvt 1/25/2017 04:56
As one who has ADD and only discovered that when my teen daughter was diagnosed, I can tell you that Adderall works. Without it, I find focusing at the board much more difficult, especially in long games. It's been known for quite some time, by students and performers in the arts, that ADD medication helps considerably if you don't have ADD. It also helps for many to take a little Xanax before a performance to quell anxiety.

Another medication that has been used by many is Huperzine A which is an over the counter herbal remedy. Huperzine is used to increase cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients and has been studied by the NIH in the US with positive results shown. IIRC, a former president of the US Chess Federation was given a very difficult time when she tried to line up a Huperzine manufacturer as a sponsor for the federation.
mdamien mdamien 1/25/2017 04:14
The study perhaps suggests chess as good exercise for treating ADHD.
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