Interesting anecdote/experiment

Recently i was diagnosed as being copper deficient and borderline anemic.   So i've been taking 1.5 mg Cu 2x a day for the past 6 days.  In general, I've been feeling a little better, the past few days, even  more so.  Energy/less brain fog..breathing easier?!  I'm assuming im getting more oxygen from Iron being assimilated properly again.

Now to the interesting part.  Another side effect of this has been my mind feeling more focused. Not "Focusyn" focused, just feeling a lot faster.   So what better place to test this out than in 1 min chess?! The results?  In short, new all time highs in bullet and blitz today.  Now in bullet, ive played 6000 games.  So the chances of this happening at the same time as taking copper..... remote right?

Ive always thought of the chess community as being a super untapped resource for realtime/non-invasive brain experiments.   Maybe a simple experiment would be to take the avg rating of your last 100 games..take small amounts of Cu for a few days to "pre-load",  then continue taking copper while playing another 100 bullet or blitz games in a relative short amount of time.  i.e. 10 games a day for 10 days?  Then just compare the numbers when finished.  

Now ideally, you should be tested first to make sure youre not toxic or anything... but im taking just a little over the RDA. 

I would be really interested in your results!!

correlation is not causation. plus you need a placebo group, and other stuff.

by the way while we're running random experiments I've found red bull to improve results.

look at you Mr. Wizard!  never said i was running a random double blind placebo experiment.  thats why chess offers another way to quantify it 

say the experiment was open to active players within +/-200 points of their all time highs, but not closer than 100(to rule out a few flukey games)  ...and the  player hasnt made new all time highs within the past 6 months (showing no real rapid improvement)

what would you say if 1/4+ of the players made new highs before the 100 games were up? 1/3? 1/2? 

i guess you could say increased focus during the experiment could account for improvement... either way you win:)

Would be naive to think these super GMs arent all nootropic'd up with some kind of cocktail at these important tournaments... the least of which being a red bull at the table.

MOAR!