Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Test of the regulations


Does anybody remember the drugs test Rio Ferdinand forgot to take? It was a little over five years ago: on the 23rd of September 2003. He was asked to take a drugs test at Manchester United's training ground, left that venue without complying and as a result served an eight-month suspension from all professional football, beginning in January 2004 and extending past the European Championships in summer of that year.

It was accepted that he had not avoided the test because he had anything to hide: if that had been suspected, the ban would almost certainly have been for two years and his professional career would have been in jeopardy. But it was clear that he had no reasonable excuse for missing the test and although neither Manchester United nor England were happy, there were plenty of people within the game who thought that Ferdinand was probably lucky to get away with the ban he received. You cannot refuse or otherwise avoid a drugs test: all professional sportspeople understand that, as do their teammates, trainers, managers, employers, advisers and agents. Rio Ferdinand understood that and failed to take the test anyway. Hence his ban.

I was reminded of this episode when the kerfuffle occurred involving Vasily Ivanchuk's stupid and indefensible refusal to take a drugs test at the end of the Olympiad, for which refusal he has received a similarly indefensible amount of sympathy, some of it from people who should know better.

Now, some issues in this whole affair need disentangling. It is not necessary, for instance, to agree with drugs testing in chess to think that Ivanchuk's failure to take a test is indefensible. I'm very much not in favour of drugs testing in chess: rather the contrary. While my drugs experiences (both in and outside chess) have been rather conservative and almost entirely restricted to alcohol, if any of my opponents wish, by way of contrast, to experiment with mescaline or psilocybe cubensis prior to or during a game I am very happy to encourage them to do so. All in the service of scientific endeavour, the pursuit of pleasure and my winning more games of chess, three causes which I think I can enthusiastically support.


Drugs testing, by contrast, I can't support with any enthusiasm at all: nor the application of chess to join the Olympics, which is probably doomed as a project and the most likely practical consequence of which would be to kill off the Olympiad, one of my favourite events in chess. (Indeed, if the net result of this particular farce is to strengthen the Olympiad at the expense of the Olympic bid, then not everything about it will have turned out to be stupid.)

However, I'm also a strong supporter of the principle that sporting events should take place according to the rules and that no competitor is above them. None. Not Garry Kasparov, not Bobby Fischer, not Rio Ferdinand. None. They are obliged to play according to the rules under which they have agreed to play. They may disagree with them and say so. They may even on occasion choose to defy them openly, on a point of principle, and take the consequences. But they are not above them. They may not ignore them. They may not say, either overtly or in effect, "these rules do not apply to me, because of who I am".


Now there are many players who get emotionally upset when they lose a game of chess in traumatic circumstances. Vasily Ivanchuk, who is known to take his chess emotionally, is one, and the present writer is another: on those grounds I can sympathise with Ivanchuk and understand him. However, even if we take his emotional state into account (or accept Rio Ferdinand's defence that he forgot about his test) it's useful to remember that these people were not on their own. When Ferdinand was asked to take his test, there were Manchester United officials present: Ivanchuk was part of the Ukranian team. In either situation there were other people present whose responsibility it was to try and make sure that the test was taken. It's a failure not just of the individual (which is primarily the case) but also of the organisation who they were representing.

Now the question is - do we really want chessplayers, or footballers, or athletes or cyclists or tennis players or golfers, to be able to ignore the rules when it suits them? Even if we do not personally agree with those rules, even if we understand that people have emotional reactions which cause them to behave irrationally or forgetfully, even if we dislike the authority which has the responsibility to enforce them? Andybody who cheers on Ivanchuk has to ask whether they really want the biggest players to be bigger than the game itself. Is that really where you want chess to go? Have you really thought about what happens if it does? Is that a box you really want to open?

But of course that box is probably open already, if we are to be honest about it. It is highly unlikely that FIDE have the clout to back up any decision they take, unless that decision is to accept Ivanchuk's excuses and decide to impose no penalty (save perhaps a modest fine). The reason is that they know that if it comes down to it, leading tournaments are likely to prefer to invite Ivanchuk to play and call FIDE's bluff. And I think it would be a bluff - whereas I cannot imagine a cycle race or tennis tournament accepting a player who was serving a ban.

Which to my mind, tells us something else. There is a lot of complaining from leading grandmasters about their lot in chess. The truth is that they have fewer obligations and more influence than their contemporaries in almost any other sport that I can think of. Almost no other leading sportspeople can, for instance, pick and choose the events they play in to quite the extent that one can in chess: not in tennis, not in motor racing, not in golf. I can only think of boxing, among genuinely worldwide sports, that can compare, and boxing is not an example any helthy sport should seek to imitiate.

By and large, in chess, it's the top players who have the clout. To some extent that's a good thing - but it's not entirely a good thing, especially not if it makes them bigger than the rules. And their constant tiresome complaining that the truth is otherwise - that's not a good thing at all.

What happened in football in 2003? The richest football club in the world and their record transfer were shown not to be bigger than the sport and its rules. That's a good example for chess. It's an example chess should be able to follow. I doubt we will. I doubt we can.

[the views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author, as per usual.]

[Images: Amazon, Chessbase]

23 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

One thing Ivanchuk said in his defence was that he didn't know he was being asked to take a drugs test: he just thought a stranger was asking for his urine, so he ignored the stranger as one generally would. Probably FIDE need to advertise for a full-time piss-taker (insert joke here) with, for instance, ID showing themselves as such.

Btw, I agree with you about the power of chess players. However, they are only so powerful because FIDE is so weak or at least weakly regarded. If FIDE had a robust and inclusive World Championship system they could exclude players from . . . probably it would be a different story.

ejh said...

It would, but how would such a championship happen? As I said on Friday, I think the main reason why the system isn't robust is that the players want to pick and choose. Then of course they want it to be robust: perhaps they should look at their own role a bit more than they do.

I am a bit sceptical about Ivanchuk's claim, I must admit. And even if I accepted it - like I say, there were other people about who should have been able to advise him.

Jonathan B said...

Got to agree that the attempt to get chess into the olympics is,

(a) really quite exceptionally retarded
(b) almost certainly going to end in disappointment.

Anonymous said...

I agree that the rules should be adhered to but I'd also like to know about how the drugs testers engaged with the players.

What announcements were made about the drug testing requirement and in what circumstances? What were the processes for selecting players for testing, informing the selected players and their representatives, and delivering the selected players to the test?

Angus

Chris Morgan said...

The defence that you forgot to take a drug test cannot be accepted in any sport because any drug taker could use that excuse. You might aswell not have the rule at all.
It seems the only way for professional chess players to have less power over FIDE would be to have a World Championship that had top prize money, but I don't know if that would be possible.
As for the Olympics, I think it should be the pinnacle of any participating sport, at least for amateurs, which in my view rules out professional football, tennis and chess. Also, chess doesn't really go along with the Olympic motto of 'faster, higher, stronger'. Maybe it would have to be blitz chess.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that a couple of no-name players got punished after the 2004 Olympiad. Surely then Ivanchuk should be punished similarly? I bet you this won't happen.

Anyway, going off-topic.

Here's a few suggested topics for this website a la Alan Partridge for BBC progs ("Money Tennis"?);

1. Pics of chess players with bad haircuts - there's hundreds out there!

2. Pics of ugly chess players - but this will have the potential of offending hundreds of players :-)

3. Pics of chess players with bad dress sense - only saw the Wanstead & Woodford pic here which was v. funny. There must be loads of material out there albeit in chess magazines so I hope people out there have scanners :-) I also hope someone took a pic of GM Jones with his trousers a few inches too short for him in the 2007 Staunton Memorial :-)

4. 'Close encounters' with titled chess players in totally non-chess settings e.g. sitting opposite an IM on a train (So spotting titled players spectating at a chess tournament does not count! e.g. at 2008 Staunton Memorial seeing GM Conquest, GM Rowson, IM Houska etc is a no no!)

There could be a scoring system like this;

5 points - GM
3 points - IM
1 point - FM, WGM etc
1 point - Transport
3 points - Pub
1 point - Other

My 5 such occurrences so far in my life has yielded me 26 points.

A game for non-titled players only I'm afraid as Richard B. would probably get hundreds of points.

Jonathan B said...

I like the idea of 4 particularly.

I once bumped into Vlad Kramnik while he was buying cigarettes in a small newsagents in Aldgate.

Morgan Daniels said...

Really Jonathan? You do seem to see GMs in the oddest of places.

On the subject of experimenting with mescaline: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vnUsawVbRvo&feature=related

Anonymous said...

I think I should get 100 points for running into Michael Adams at an otherwise entirely deserted Woodside Park Station when he was still living in Cornwall.

PG

Anonymous said...

Well i'm going to vaguelycontroversial and to disagree almost totally with this post.

Off the top of my head i can think of very few "rules" directly outside the conduct of the game itself (and many within) which have any real necessity. Probably doesn't apply to drugs, but the modern trend of introducing formal rules for anything that someone sees as faintly undesirable where previously social pressure or understanding of etiquette would have sufficed is a very sad development.

As such i have no hesitation in saying i have no problem with players being "above the rules". The ideal scenario would be that EVERYBODY was above them, but frankly better some, than none at all, especially if the contradictions only serve to undermine their application to everyone else. If some people do not face penalty because of their status then that is FIDE's problem, not their's.

I don't accept the standard argument that "if one chooses to play the game then one must automatically accept the framework in which the game operates, regardless of what that involves". Players like Ivanchuk will have made their career decisions long before FIDE became the organisation that it is today.

FIDE is not "weak" and little respected because of its failure to organise a proper world championship cycle. It is weak and little respected because it is run by people, many highly dubious, who owe their postions to the votes of representatives of countries who barely play chess and have no serious claim to involvement in its administration.

Richard

ps. I hardly see why i would have an advantage in the "randomly bumping into titled players" game. In fact, by definition, i would be at an automatic disadvantage!

Anonymous said...

I do not understand the argument that following the rules should be disentangled from a person's principles, or the integrity of the *game* itself.
In our world, people like monopolies; they clamor for a governing body to set the ground rules and be the sole decider in the arena under question. It's an unfortunate but quite common condition. And so in this world people find themselves at the mercy of rulemakers who very frequently come up with rules that have no bearing on anything of substance, and to still "play" you find yourself under these conditions. But in the end you still have your morals and your individual belief in right and wrong. To hell with stupid rules that have no constructive purpose. All those with character should ignore them - for that is how they lose their power.

ejh said...

Richard:

1. If some people do not face penalty because of their status then that is FIDE's problem, not their's.

No, it's chess's problem. If the most powerful individuals can make their own rules, what happens to world championships? What happens when there are controversies during tournaments? The same people who complain (with reason) now that FIDE does not stick to the rules will find that nobody does if they can help it.

2. I don't accept the standard argument that "if one chooses to play the game then one must automatically accept the framework in which the game operates, regardless of what that involves". Players like Ivanchuk will have made their career decisions long before FIDE became the organisation that it is today.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the latter part of this, but the former part - well, I said in the piece that one may defy the rules on a point of principle and take the consequences, just as one may defy an unjust law and then appeal to the court of public opinion. But is that what Ivanchuk is doing? Has he said "to hell with drugs tests!" - and if he does think this, why did he not say so before the Olympiad or before the final round or when the tester came a-calling?

3. It is weak and little respected because it is run by people, many highly dubious, who owe their postions to the votes of representatives of countries who barely play chess and have no serious claim to involvement in its administration.

This is partly true, but only part of the truth. I don't think it's any more dubious than FIFA or the IOC, for instance - though that's pretty stiff competition. And I don't think I want FIDE to be the representative only of the stronger (and wealther) countries - either it's a world game or it's not. And if people in, say, Western Europe think otherwise, they can't be surprised if people elsewhere take a dim view of that.

In general I think it's impotant for any sport to have a credible and functioning administrative structure. Plainly it doesn't help achieve this if FIDE is perceived as corrupt. But nor does it help achieve this if people deliberately set out to weaken it for the benefit of leading players, however popular. That seems to me to be a recipe for a splintered and brawling chess world.

Anonymous said...

"I once bumped into Vlad Kramnik while he was buying cigarettes in a small newsagents in Aldgate"

Wasn't Aldgate the venue of the Intel Grand Prix in London? If so, deduct 1 point :-) So that's 5 points for that encounter.

"I think I should get 100 points for running into Michael Adams at an otherwise entirely deserted Woodside Park Station when he was still living in Cornwall"

Excellent shout, you get bonus points for the no.1 UK player. So 5points + 1 point + 2 bonus pts = 8 points.

"ps. I hardly see why i would have an advantage in the "randomly bumping into titled players" game. In fact, by definition, i would be at an automatic disadvantage!"

Yes, good point, I will let you play :-) "Random" has to be put into the topic title somehow.

I will award bonus points if you said something to the titled player when he/she don't know you from Adam - this is especially hard to do without sounding like a nutter isn't it?

I'll post each of my 5 encounters in separate (very short) articles -that is, if it gets past the editors. otherwise I'll offer it to another website :-)

CS (author of orginal topic suggestions)

P.S. Just thought of another possible topic - 5 favourite articles from this blog. I've done mine :-)

Jonathan B said...

Morgan:

yes it's true. It turned out he was playing in one of those Intel Rapid chess events over the road - but I hadn't realised that at the time. I only found that out the following evening.

ejh said...

So, what's his brand?

Jonathan B said...

God knows. It was years ago. He might not even smoke now for all I know.

I do remember that he just pointed at the cigarettes and shoved a note in the shopkeeper's hand. Not much, if any, spoken words exchanged

Anonymous said...

"This is partly true, but only part of the truth. I don't think it's any more dubious than FIFA or the IOC, for instance - though that's pretty stiff competition. And I don't think I want FIDE to be the representative only of the stronger (and wealther) countries - either it's a world game or it's not. And if people in, say, Western Europe think otherwise, they can't be surprised if people elsewhere take a dim view of that."

I know that you have a bit of a tendency towards defending establisment structures, Justin, but i would hope that even you are playing Devil's advocate to some extent on this. Frankly, defending FIDE's "one country, one vote" structure is akin to arguing that the UK was democratic prior to the Great Reform Act.

Several assorted hamlets in Cornwall, several votes. Cities the size of Liverpool, one vote.

It is nothing to do with the "stronger (or wealthier)" countries dominating. It is simply that those countries with the most players with an interest in FIDE's decisions should be those with the most sway. Outside of the US Senate, that is a fairly universal view of what democracy should entail.

There are representatives of countries in FIDE who represent a handful of FIDE rated players, if that. Yielding hugely disproportionate power, these people represent nobody except themselves. It is hardly surprising that accusations of corruption are rife!

FIDE's motto is "Gens una Sumus". Quite how that translates into single individuals representing nobody equating to others representing thousands is beyond my comprehension.

Unless FIDE's decisions can be truly argued to be representative of the views of the players for whom it exists, it should command no support from anyone, and any indication of its weakness should be applauded.

Richard

ejh said...

I know that you have a bit of a tendency towards defending establishment structures, Justin

No I don't, Richard, and given my remarks on FIDE last Friday (as well as the fact that you can find my written criticisms of Kirsan going back years) I don't think it's a defensible claim.

I do, however, have a tendency to think that just invoking FIDE or the ECF and thinking that one thereby proves (or solves) anything is not only far too simplisitc, but often serves to obscure the interests and motives of other actors involved. This is a means of proceeding I intend to stick to. I don't like Kirsan or Makro: this doesn't mean that I have to give anybody else a free ride (and especially not Fred Friedel).

It is nothing to do with the "stronger (or wealthier)" countries dominating. It is simply that those countries with the most players with an interest in FIDE's decisions should be those with the most sway. Outside of the US Senate, that is a fairly universal view of what democracy should entail.

No it isn't! It's the way most international sporting bodies work and it's the way the United Nations works. It's the normal, standard, straightforward way for an international organisation to operate a voting structure. It may be open to criticism and it's perfectly valid to suggest that it privileges smaller countries (or smaller chessplaying communities) just as the US Senate does and it's equally valid to suggest that it might be better to weight countries according to the number of registered chessplayers*. What's not valid is to describe that as a "fairly universal view". In which sporting bodies does that "fairly universal" principle apply? In which other international bodies does it obtain?

[* I can see some vaild objections, though: one might be that it would encourage the registration of paper or non-existent players and another is that it would put the developing nations at a disadvantage. These are points to bear in mind, though, not necessarily insuperable objections.]

Anonymous said...

Actually it is not how the United Nations works but i'll let that pass...

I also don't know who suggested that International Sporting bodies bore much resemblance to democracy... Does anyone seriously argue that the IOC is democratic?

The fact that other sporting bodies are equally poorly structured is irrelevant. All are as indefensible as each other (although few are as bad as FIDE).

ejh said...

it is not how the United Nations works

I think it is, although of course there is the Security Council built into the UN structure: which, ah, privileges a few countries with a lot of power.

The fact that other sporting bodies are equally poorly structured is irrelevant.

No it's not: if the same pattern recurs every time it's possile that there ae good reasons for it as well as bad, and it's possible thaat among these are that most of the world doesn't consider it desirable that a few countries should dominate all the rest. That's an argument and it needs to be taken seriously if people want to engage with the real problem of FIDE democracy (or the lack thereof) rather than

(a) just complain about it
(b) see only the problems and concerns of chess in some countries and not in others.

Mike G said...

I seem to remember from an interview with Kramnik done around the time he beat GK to become WC that he had givven up smoking by then.

ejh said...

I can't even find any photos of him smoking, much to my surprise.

Jonathan B said...

MIKE G:
Yes he had. But he started again by the time he played Leko. There's some comment about it in Bareev's book.