Chess experiment: How much does three pints of beer impact your chess ability?

That's funny, the better I drink the more I play.

I agree, the bore I plink the metter I dray (hic)

* Update for all relevant chess.com threads - The Great Beer/Chess Experiment, Game 3 - Saturday June 15th 2013 *

Thanks to everyone who helped with this third game, including those who provided valuable advice on experimental assessment and consistency, discussion regarding the chess-inducing euphoric state (Siduri's kiss) as well as my more technically savvy colleagues who helped me get the somewhat weird chess.com PGN of the third game working in "Hal" (ChessPro). Unfortunately, the truly epic nature of the battle that occurred today between myself and brother Saeed (comprising of over 120 ply) has taken a very long time to analyze, think about and write up, and my wife has firmly "requested" that I now stop working on, what essentially amounts to, this PGN mini-novel, and spend some quality time with her... Torn between my commitment to bring you, my fine chess.com colleagues, the promised annotated game at the earliest possible time point, and my desire to be a reasonably decent husband, I have decided, probably wisely, to focus on the latter path and will have to postpone the completion and posting of this third epic chess game till tomorrow, at which point I will post it to the beginning of the main Beer/Chess experiment thread:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-experiment-how-much-does-three-pints-of-beer-impact-your-chess-ability

Have a good evening fellow chess lovers...

* Update for all relevant threads - The Great Beer/Chess Experiment, Game 3 *

Dear colleagues, as promised, I now submit for your scientific review, the fully annotated Game 3 of our Great Beer/Chess Experiment.  The aforementioned game has now been posted to the beginning of the main experimental thread:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-experiment-how-much-does-three-pints-of-beer-impact-your-chess-ability

I hope to add Game 4 to our data archive this coming weekend.

How many games will you play on beer?

Not sure yet... hopefully as many as it takes to reach a statistically significant result. We must all sacrifice for science!

We must!

I tried this out once, Didn't work in my favor!!

How are you planning to control for other variables? Going for a run before the game affects the levels of ions in your bloodstream, along with glucose, ketone bodies etc, all of which are relevant to brain function. Worrying about the missus can't help your concentration, 'specially if somebody tells her about your ongoing fantasies about Siduri, the former Miss Iran.

Don't worry, it won't be me

I swear to drunk I'm not God.  That being said,  I think 3 pints of beer if better for my chess if it is my opponent drinking the 3 pints and not me.

Very good question. I strongly suspect that running 6 miles prior to the game has been having a strong influence on me physically, especially when combined with little water, three rapidly consumed pints of beer on an essentially empty stomach... although when I say "empty" I did eat half a banana, drink a small glass of milk and consume a bunch of vitamins (both a multivitamin and quite a high dose of energy-specific B-vitamins)... come to think of it, I should really have mentioned the energy-specific B-vitamins before, I really do eat a lot; so on top of what is essentially a regular complete multivitamin, I also consume (with my half banana) 25 mg of niacin, which is over 120% of the recommended daily amount (100% of which I already got from the multivitamin, so call it 220%), 15mg of riboflavin, which is over 800% of the recommended daily amount, 25 mg of vitamin B6 which is over 1,000% of the recommended daily amount and the Big Kahuna of them all, vitamin B12, of which I eat 1000 mcg, which is over 16,000% of the recommended daily amount! All consumed roughly 2 hours prior to the "Great Beer/Chess Experiment" games... Perhaps "Siduri's kiss" has something to do with massive amounts of B12 hitting the blood?  Anyway, my plan to control for all these variables is to try and keep everything identical from week to week, the exact same food and drink, the exact same vitamins, the exact same run, the exact same venue, the exact same beer consumed at the exact same speed, followed by the exact same type of 30/0 live chess game... unfortunately the game itself represents a variable I can not control, and as we can all attest to, every chess game is different; thus I will not be surprised if I see significant differences in my chess ability and experience during the game from week to week.  Only time (and beer) will tell...  The (scientific) show must go on...

Regarding your latter point. My wife is already well aware of my fondness for chess, running, beer and yes Siduri. She is unaware that I have coined a term ("Siduri's kiss") to describe a possible chess-induced euphoric revelation when these things are all carefully combined... but this is a secret that I'll keep between you, me and our close select circle of chess-loving associates on chess.com.

Just wanted to say that these 9 pages just kept me from doing real work for almost an hour.  Keep up the good work, and I'll cheer silently from my engineer's chair.  I desperately wanted to support the creation of a new account with which to compare sober rating to 3-pints rating, but your comment about chess.com's policy regarding multiple accounts quashed my dreams.  Alas, science has always had its foes, and I am sure that chess.com is neither aware of its trangressions nor will be the last to transgress.  Onwards and drunkwards, for science!

Maybe create an account at another site or two. Play stoned or plastered in one account and compare results with the field at that site. Large pools of players should be around the same average rating

Oooh, good idea!  Chess.com has a ranking tidbit if you click on one of your ratings [e.g. my online ranking of 1676 puts me at "#27,229 of 323,717 (91.4%)"], so you could compare your percentage across sites - assuming those other sites have such a ranking.

A fellow brother of the cloth! That being the scientific cloth we use to clean up those occasional spills that plague any scientific experimentation, regardless of the field. Creating those 9 pages has kept me doing real work for... well... I'd be embarrassed to admit.  Thank you, I will indeed "keep up the good work", although the actual data gathering has been pushed onto a weekend schedule, so I apologize for the slow speed at which new data is gathered.  Due to funding limitations I am forced to use the vast majority of my time studying personalized cellular therapeutics and other mundane topics unrelated to the great chess-related truths we seek on this forum.  I harbor no ill will to chess.com, their terms of service may not help this experiment, but they do make sense for the 99.999% of other accounts on this website, and it would be unfair on other players if they made an exception for this experiment... no matter how tempted they may be... you know... just this once... to make an official exception... Anyway, I am already very grateful that they have continued to host this thread, and we will work within the limits set by our chess.com benefactors and move, step-by-step, closer to the all important truth. Onwards and drunkwards, for science!!!

Here's another way to get a spare account. Use your wife's internet connection. She won't mind

She won't mind, but, alas, playing under someone else's account is also against chess.com's terms of service.

Perhaps we should just accept, without an official invitation by a chess.com member of staff to do otherwise (???) that we are stuck each using just one chess.com account, and any scientific experimentation will need to be within that account... I know... I know... you are scared to "waste" your hard earned Elo points on this experiment.  But: (1) give yourself a hard slap in the face, it is for the greater good, FOR SCIENCE damn it, you should be lining up to sacrifice your Elo points to help us understand this all important fundamental truth and (2) who says it will rob you of Elo points anyway? The conclusions are not yet in, and I have been very VERY surprised, game after game after game, I have not lost a single game yet when I am three sheets (or more specifically three pints) to the wind...

I'm pretty sure that this site uses Glicko, not Elo. I think the idea is that Elo was pre common computer, and Glicko leads to more rapid reevaluation of ratings.

3 schooners in an hour? That ain't drunk. Unless you're a tiny person.

For me, playing after the late news and my usual 6 or 7 standard units of alcohol ie 2 litres or so of beer, I'd guess that my rating would be down by about 50 pts, probably not 100.

I get a bigger effect from my usual 2 hrs of road cycling ie 50 (hilly course) or 60 (only small rises) km, causing 3 to 5 litres of sweat, depending on the temperature, to affect my blood chemistry

I'd be willing to participate, but I can only be in one control group.

And, stopping at three pints might be an issue.

I'd be more than happy to participate in further studies involving consumption of any palatable alcoholic beverage: beer, wine, cognac...

Has anyone mentioned marijuana yet?