“How many beers would you have to drink for me to beat you in a game of classical chess?” Magnus Carlsen (grandmaster and current world number one in chess) was asked this question a couple of weeks ago. And it wasn’t just anyone who asked him this question: Levy Rozman, international master and the most important chess YouTuber of the moment.
Carlsen smiled and said: “I would probably start with 20 and go from there.”
“Okay, okay.” Unsure whether the answer was serious or a joke, Rozman changed the subject somewhat bewildered. However, the topic is very interesting. To what extent does alcohol affect cognitive abilities?
Carlsen vs Rozman. The question is particularly interesting in chess because the sport has a system that allows estimating the probability of a player losing to another: the Elo. At the time of the interview, Magnus had an Elo rating of 2830 and Levy had an Elo rating of 2322. A difference of 508 points: that is, under normal conditions, Levy Rozman had a 4% chance of winning a game.
But Carlsen is a real beast. He has not lost classical chess to anyone under 2400 in 16 years. His worst defeat was in 2008, when he lost to a player with an elo rating of 2512 (but, as he himself explained, he got nervous because his opponent was wearing a watch — something that is prohibited by FIDE rules).
According to this system, if the difference is above 735 points, there is no chance for the weaker player to win.
And this is where alcohol comes in… The Elo system, unfortunately, does not come with a table on the effects of alcohol on the player, but we know that they are not minor. In 2009, grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev was unable to finish a game because, drunk as a skunk, he fell asleep after 11 moves.
What does alcohol do to our cognitive ability? Alcohol is the “most widespread toxic habit in the world” and that means that everyone is aware of its most important cognitive effects. There are many, but for our purposes, there are some that are particularly critical.
Alcohol consumption affects executive functions (pdf) such as cognitive flexibility, phonological verbal fluency, working memory and processing speed. It also has a detrimental effect on decision making. These would be problems.
In addition, alcohol also affects psychomotor skills and other physical processes.
A more aggressive style. However, alcohol also has effects that could be helpful in games. It can create a false sense of security, lead us to take more risks and diminish our sense of prudence. JustGettingThisOffMyChess analyzed the playing style of some chess players with known alcohol problems on Chess.com and concluded that they were, in fact, very aggressive.
In contemporary chess, surprise is important, so this could be a trump card.
Are 20 beers enough to stop the Nordic beast? Carlsen is the best active player in the world and, frankly, it is hard to imagine him losing to a player like Rozman even if, like Tkachiev, he fell asleep in the middle of the game.
Before 2019, Carlsen drank a lot of alcohol and was in fact famous for playing online games while drinking. However, as he himself explained, after some bad experiences he had stopped drinking.
This only reinforces the idea that the “20 beers” were a joke. Realistically, after four beers — a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 — cognitive abilities decline very quickly. And after the fifth, the errors would begin to accumulate until they became unsustainable a little later.
Image | Andreas Kontokanis
At WorldOfSoftware | The world of chess faces its worst threat in years: accusations of cheating