@antiwow: According to an interview somewhere (think I saw it in Chess Today), he was completely distraught because of his loss to Kamsky, and when some guy he never saw before started to talk to him, he just completely ignored him and walked away. He never realized what it was about.

@John
It's not so simple.
When a cyclist takes epo, he can store more oxygen and his performance will improve dramatically. When a weight lifter takes steroids, his muscles will grow. These are relatively simple processes.
Once again I give the example of Max Euwe, who on one occasion experimented with amfetamins. It gave him an abundance of energy, he felt he could do just anything. After the adjournment, he went to his second and to the latter's astonishment he said something like "come on, let's analyse this to a win". The position was dead lost... The drug gave him lots of energy and self-confidence but on the other hand, it impaired his judgment. He didn't repeat the experiment.
That is the problem when you use drugs to enhance your mental performances: the processes involved in playing chess are far too complicated. You will never know what will happen exactly. So if you take Ritalin, for instance, it will enhance your concentration. But what effect will it have on your ability to make (fast) decisions? I'm not a pharmacologist, but the official Dutch doping agency (NeCeDo) says about the same (see my 1/12 reaction on "Armenia and Georgia happy", 30/11).
This Ritalin story (I've seen it before) confirms what I wrote earlier: people will always find something if told to look for it. No one ever heard of a mediocre chess player taking Ritalin and performing clearly better after that. In contrast: everybody could see that Italian cyclists in the early 90's were suddenly performing far better, the word "epo" was already buzzing around in the cycling world and only after that, the substance was investigated by doping authorities and banned.
First FIDE-officials looked greedy at the olympic pot of gold, then chess had to become a sport, then there had to be doping regulations and only then lists began too appear of substances that might enhance mental performances. A truly virtual problem, I would say.

I agree with everything John said, except

"I think that some sort of action needs to be taken on Ivanchuk, but not a 2-year ban."

No, not some sort of action, but exactly the action that is prescribed for refusing the doping test.

Well does anyone know WHY he didnt take the test? If he outright refused to take the doping test, he should ofcourse be punished. I dont think it's a ridiculous FIDE rule at all, not to mention that if you don't want to take dopingtests you know that in advance and shouldn't play then

The FIDE drug testing rule is not a ridiculous idea, as some people try to make it seem.

It is a FACT that drugs such as Ritalin (used to treat attention deficit disorder) when given to "normal" people results in the ability to engage in intensely focused concentration and thought. Imagine how much more easily a player could calculate with the kind of intense focus and clarity this would provide?

I think that drug testing needs to not only be strict, but it should also take place at more events (randomly, to minimize costs) to make sure that players don't try to be clever and cheat the system by using drugs to enhance their abilities to think.

As an addition to my previous comment:

I think that some sort of action needs to be taken on Ivanchuk, but not a 2-year ban.

If he gets away with nothing then what kind of precedent will this set?

In the future other people (guilty ones even) will do the same thing and say "oh but you didn't punish Ivanchuk, so you can't punish me either or else it will be unfair and show favoritism"

Do we really want to give everyone an open card to violate rules that players were fully aware of before the competition and agreed to when they decided to play?

I would liketo see Ivanchuk just ignoring this ridiciolous FIDE rule. If FIDE bans him for 2 years, organizers will stop cooperation with FIDE so I think they would never do that.

Great to see a new super-tournament in China. This is great news for chess. Hopefully, it will be a returning event, maybe in the Grand Slam cycle.
Now we just need similar tournaments in the US and India.

After many hours of non-stop drinking in Hamburg night life I can only say: WE LOVE YOU IVANCHUK ! IVANCHUK FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!

Full support for Ivanchuk also from here, also from Norway. Without this brilliant and fascinating player chess world would be poorer, without FIDE the chess world would be richer.

I guess Ilyumzinov does not really want to ban Ivanchuk. Perhaps he is pretending to be tough just to show IOC he takes doping seriously. Then, after hearing Ivanchuk in Wjik aan Zee, he can decide not to ban him, having coming up with an excuse for IOC.

Lol, peter ... it seems you have a troll

Oops, forgot the golden rule, don't feed the trolls!!

Once again;

About the Ivanchuck case:

We, the chess fans-practitioners of the world, need Ivanchucks?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s geniality. We need more players like Ivanchuck in the tournaments; we, certainly, do not need the International Olympic Committee,

Much less do we need FIDE's nosy gangbangers to interfere with individual chessplayers's peculiarities.

I guess every media outlet has their photo editor frantically looking for "glassy-eyed Chucky " pics.

Too predictable. Too lame.