The fortnight that wasn’t
By Tom Keane July 29, 2007
The chess world was rocked by allegations of steroid use by top competitors. Federal investigators said that, in retrospect, the signs of abuse were clear. “Once scrawny chess players are now forcefully moving their pieces around the board with overdeveloped, muscular hands,” said one source. Followers of the game said that the number of strong players had increased dramatically in recent years.
“Just look at the game notations and it becomes clear,” said one insider at the US Chess Federation. “It used to be that you’d get a ‘!’ maybe once or twice a game, and a ‘!!’ would hardly ever happen. Nowadays, it’s six or seven ‘!!s’ a game, and it’s not uncommon to find two or three ‘!!!s.’ “
Click here for the full story.
Wrong link or needs more linking.
Great story. Looks like a fun read. Hope to be able to read the entire story.
Kirsan and his drug checking is rediculous. It is an invasion of a person’s dignity and privacy. When they find something that makes a person smarter they should drink some first. haha.
It’s the correct link. You need to read the full story. Funny actually.
It’s as if the author was trying to say prior to this chessplayers, top players especially, are generally “softly” built. Look at the Kaparov-Karpov matches in the 80s. Anybody would believe they were competing in a wrestling match if both wore wrestling tights.
It is absolutely common sense that top players need to maintain a high fitness level for the brain to perform near the peak (Fischer aside, let’s be humanly reasonable…3, 4%?) of the brain’s capacity.
Great humor article. But since Mr. Junian refers to Karpov-Kasparov, it’s worth remembering the first match in 1984. It was widely believed that Karpov was propped up with amphetamine, having been exhausted after being held to 40 draws. He “crashed” in more ways than one in games 47 and 48; that’s when FIDE pulled the plug.
alo.eduMy guess as to the inspiration for the chess reference is Gary Player’s allegations last week about steroid use in golf.