Per Ilya's request ... Discuss

USCF Executive Board to ask Truong to resign

• New York Times article

• Some additional information at ChessUSA

It seems that the time is fast approaching when it will be appropriate to write the epitaph on the Polgar era of the USCF. Let me suggest a few lines from this little ditty by The Who:

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that' all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war....

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss....

We don't get fooled again

UPDATE (1/16) - Susan Polgar responds to the New York Times article:

This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. Answers and evidence were submitted to the USCF attorney. I was on the phone with the USCF attorney for a considerable length of time to discuss this matter and to answer his questions. If additional information was needed, we should have been asked. No one asked. I have an email from the USCF attorney confirming that he received the evidence. We were under the impression that everything was fine until last night after the statement has already been submitted to the NY Times....

Can't say I saw this coming

Hard to believe, but apparently the Chess Blog Carnival is now a source of controversy.

In a recent post, Chess Tyro writes that the most recent addition of the Carnival ... "left a sour taste in my mouth and make[s] me question, perhaps unfairly, whether the coordinator’s original intention was really as noble as he made it out to be..."

He lists three major complaints:

1. "...an internet money-making scheme that has a big fat zero relation to chess..." was included
   
   
2. "...no editorial work [was] done..."
   
   
3. The Carnival was "...posted in a newly created discussion forum known to be owned by a currently controversial chess personality that the coordinator seems to be closely associated with..."

While Chess Tyro thinks something nefarious is going on, I'm inclined to believe that most of this can be explained by lack of effort and attention to detail on the part of this month's Carnival editor. Although, in Jack's defense, it's not as if any of us offered to take on the task.

Let no one say I threw the first rock

I've had a post about Susan Polgar and Sam Sloan in draft for about a month but haven't posted it because I've been busy with other topics and because I thought it might just be a gratuitous attempt to create controversy out the fact that the two simply see the world very differently (not that I have any problem with gratuitous controversy, mind you). However, now with the blogosphere and mainstream media all in flames over Sloan's lawsuit against Polgar, I figure I can slip it by without much notice.

Before that, though, here's a roundup of the lawsuit coverage (links in no particular order):

• Chess Group Officials Accused of Using Internet to Hurt Rivals - New York Times (also reprinted at The Independent)
• Polgar/Truong caught red handed - Braden Bournival
• Polgar, Truong and Others Sued by Sloan - Chess, Goddess and Everything
• Slime Spillover - The Daily Dirt Chess Blog
• NY Times and Lawsuits - US Chess Discussion
• Lawsuits at the USCF - Bionic Lime Thoughts
• Latest Chess PR Nightmare - the pHtest
• Arguing on the Internet - USCL news and gossip
• Frivolous lawsuit and other items - Susan Polgar Chess Blog
• Dirty Chess Politics - chessexpress
• The Lawsuit Against Polgar and Truong, et al - Gambit
• Dark Knights - CapitalistImperialistPig
• Caroline, Sammy, Paul and Ubaldo - We're Watching - As Good As News
• University named as defendant in identity-theft lawsuit - The Daily Toreador

I'm reminded of the time that Dennis Monokroussos' blog got spammed with pro-Polgar comments. All of this makes one wonder who might have been the culprit in that case.

**********

OK, without further ado, here is my original post (which now seems rather mild in comparison):

The Light of Day!?

In her campaign for the USCF Executive Board, Susan Polgar promised a new spirit of openness and transparency. Now she has delivered by describing the backroom dealing that resulted in her being elected to the new position of USCF Chairman:

How did the USCF Chairman position come about? What is your opinion about these new titles?

After the new board was elected, there were two candidates for the position of President, current President Bill Goichberg and myself. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses. Bill and I discussed this situation at length to come up with the most efficient way to maximize our talents to best help the USCF.

In addition, we have a very unique board with exceptional talents and expertise in various areas that can greatly help the USCF.

So the idea of creating different positions arose. Bill, with decades of experience, knows the ins and outs and the structure of the USCF quite well. I am best in my own environment, which is to be the public face and voice of the USCF to positively promote chess and deal with potential supporters and sponsors.

The USCF by-laws committee and Mr. Harold Winston were consulted about the legality of this idea. They came to the conclusion that there is nothing in the USCF by-laws that would prevent it. Therefore, in the first meeting of the new board, this idea was proposed and we had unanimous votes for every position. This was a triumphant first step to unite the board, especially after a very bitter election.

Of course, all this fluff about unique expertise and maximizing individual talents is just spin. Nevertheless, it seems like a clear blue sky compared to how things used to work.

Or is it? Consider this perspective from Sam Sloan in an interview with Chess USA:

Polgar and Truong ran for election with the obvious plan and intention to [sic] taking control of the USCF through their four-person slate. They must be deeply disappointed now that things did not turn out the way they had hoped. They must be especially disappointed in Bauer for voting against them on several key votes. Susan wanted to be president but Bauer voted against her, so she could not get enough votes. She took the honorary title of Chairman, which is an unofficial title with no powers or duties and is not recognized in the by-laws.

What they will do I will not know but they are certainly not happy.

Now, I certainly wouldn't hold up Sam Sloan as any paragon of truth and virtue. Nevertheless, it makes one wonder if team Polgar is being as upfront as they claim to be.

Playing by the Rules - UPDATE

After an impressive 42 comments on my clock episode at the BCC, I thought I should follow up with news.

My opponent in that game decided not to withdraw from the tournament after all. Instead he chose to return the following Thursday to protest some more. Inexplicably, he was trying to insist that the night's pairings were all wrong because it lists our game as a win for me (Jason), and now his tournament is all messed up. (Note: It turns out that he was paired with a 2200 player who had an upset loss last week. No wonder he was so adamant about the "bad" pairings!)

I also understand the BCC has to form some kind of protest committee to hear the merits of the situation and make a ruling.

Jason

Financial Mismanagement at the CJA?

The following "Policy Statements" (accusations?) are posted on Daren Dillinger's campaign website for Secretary/Treasurer of the Chess Journalists of America (CJA):

Our Treasurer should be the custodian of our financial records. His duty is to preserve them, so other officers (and regular members too, should be okay) can look at them and verify what has made money and what has not.

The entire CJA Executive Board should have year round access to the records as they plan throughout the year.

The Treasurer should NOT seek to hide the records from all officers and all members. . . as is being done now. . . with the support of the CJA President.

Having this hidden records policy, just after the current Treasurer going EIGHT YEARS without any financial statements, is an additional black mark. Proof of this violation of our Constitution and By-laws is contained in the PDF files of the Chess Journalist magazine posted at the CJA website. www.chessjournalism.org

You will note only an annual balance, no financial statement of any kind. Thankfully after eight years, statements were started up in 2006. . . although with a lot of errors!

Let us improve and move forward!

Daren Dillinger

Not being a member of the CJA, I have no idea about the veracity of any of Daren's statements. Perhaps some of our readers, who are also CJA members, can shed some light on these matters.

Of course, what I'm really wondering about, is what role the lady in the red dress played in all of this?

Hat Tip: Paid Advertisement in The Chessville Weekly Newsletter, Volume 6, Issue 22

Playing by the Rules

During this week's Thursday Night BCC tournament, I was involved in a dispute over rules vs. "fair play". I would love to hear comments about this situation, especially how other people would have handled it.

Here is what happened:

At the start of the game, my opponent was about 10 minutes late. I was White, and I started my opponent's clock. He finally arrives, and he stops the clock and gets the TD. I was following an old rulebook, and I didn't make White's first move. After looking up the rule, we learn that I was in error, and that this rule now states that White should make the the first move. We reset the clocks and started play. Please remember who set the rulebook tone for this match.

Fast forward to a cliffhanger position. I had sacked two pawns for the initiative, but now, with 15 seconds vs. 40 seconds, my attack was slowed, and I was still down a pawn. With two moves to play for the first time control, my opponent inexplicbly stops the clock for a rule clarification. With the seconds ticking, I found this break to be most annoying and distracting. A little rude.

He wants to know what happens if time runs out, but neither of us have a complete scoresheet. He is told that, in order to claim a win on time, the player must have a complete score, missing up to three moves. So, if both sides have stopped taking score, then the clock will advance to the next time control, with neither side able to claim a flag. During this discussion, I looked down at my scoresheet, and I realized that I was missing 5 or 6 moves. I WAITED UNTIL HIS CLOCK WAS RESTARTED, and then I quickly filled in the missing moves, and watched as my opponent inexplicibly let his time run out, perhaps thinking that we both still had incomplete scores.... So I claimed a win on time.

He was very angry about this and claimed that the TD had misled him, that he was told the time didn't matter, even though another witness supported the account of the TD. He complained about this for about 30 minutes, when the TD finally said that this is his ruling. He also said that we could keep playing, but it was my choice. I was tired, this argument ran the game very late now, and so I claimed my win. I pointed out that he may have misunderstood the rule somehow, but he wasn't very shy about implementing the letter of the law at the start of the game. I thought it only fair to the TD, who would have to stay past midnight, and to the rule-laden spirit of this encounter, to take the gift win and go home.

He tried to shame me for this cheapo, and I do feel a little bad about the win. But didn't he, in a way, start it? What do other people think?

Jason

MonRoi ignites (and unites) the blogosphere

If all the crack marketing people at MonRoi were looking for was increased name recognition among chess blog readers, then they have surely succeeded. Of course, if they also wanted their potential customers to associate positive thoughts and feelings with their brand then they might need to rethink their approach.

The more I think about their recent spat with Mig (and perhaps the earlier controversy about game score copyright), the more it seems to me that that they are acting very much like monopolists. While we chess players don't yet have a competing electronic scoresheet product to move to, we do have a handy, inexpensive substitute in paper and pencil. Best not to provoke your customers, eh?

Here's a round-up of recent blogosphere posts on L'affaire MonRoi:

• Mon Dieu, MonRoi! - Chess, Goddess and Everything


• Annals of Corporate Chill - thepHtest


• Did I say chess is like boxing? - Reassembler


• My Monroi is evil - Confessions of a chess novice


• MonRoi - A Slice of Fried Gold


• Those pesky weeds - Chess improvement by effort (achoo!)

Trouble By The Lake

It seems that things didn't go particularly smoothly at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Chess Championship. Strange rules, not enough officials and lack of organization ultimately led to almost half the kids walking out by round 2. Here are two reports, ...:

• Tom Larson (Chicago Public Schools) Screws up the Elementary City Chess Championship (Again) - Chess 4 Chicago


• Meltdown at CPS Chess Meet - The Knights of Castle Kimbark

... a related "editorial," ...:

• A Chess Mom Speaks Out - The Knights of Castle Kimbark

... and a response from CPS:

• Chicago Public School Chess Coordinator Responds to Complaints Over Elementary Chess Tournament Problems - Chess 4 Chicago

I don't know much about the Illinois scholastic chess scene other than what I've read at The 64 Square Jungle over the years, but obviously there are issues that need to be addressed. I'm guessing it's all about adult egos, politics and power plays. How else can one explain why the CPS Championship took place the same weekend as the Illinois State K-8 Championship?

Let's all try to remember that scholastic chess is supposed to be about the kids.

Update (3/17): This story has made the front page (!) of the Chicago Tribune (Hat tip/related posts: Chess 4 Chicago & The Knights of Castle Kimbark)

The rest of the story

Like About Chess, I too have noticed a recent trend of defections from the chess blogosphere:

• Temposhlucker's decision to go on (permanent?) hiatus from the ranks of the Knights Errant is a monumental loss, perhaps second only to the day that Don Q did the same.


• Losing Goran at Chess News & Events was tempered by the fact that he continues to post at Chess Strategy. Since then, things have improved further with a new blogger taking over the reins of the original blog.


• Patrick at Chess For Blood has decided that he is "due for a break from chess and chess blogging for awhile" and the Underpromoted Knight has decided to make school a priority over chess.
  

Then there is the case of Strong In Mind's Fierabras. About Chess gave you the facts, but only here will you find the story behind the story (thanks to a tip from an unnamed Knight).

As many of you may be aware, J'adoube has been advocating the somewhat provocative position that endeavoring to play moves highly rated by top chess computers (specifically Rybka in his case) is a good path to improvement. This has resulted in some healthy and spirited debate across several posts. However, it seems that somewhere along the way Fierabras' and J'adoube's point counter-point turned heated, personal and anything but healthy. Shortly thereafter Fierabras announced his intent to leave the Knights. It isn't too hard to connect the dots.

Now, I'm certainly not here to point a finger of blame at anyone. You can read the thread and draw your own conclusions. In fact, I believe that a bit of controversy can often be a good thing in terms of generating interest and readership. Nevertheless, as a general rule it would be hard to go wrong taking to heart Sancho's previous "Can't we all just get along" appeal.

Update (3/7): Comment threads at J'adoube's blog are not currently no longer available.

Can't we all just get along?

I just love this story about feuding chess parents in Gilbert, Arizona. It makes USCF politics seem tame.

During the Arizona Scholastic State Chess Championship last April at Gilbert High School, feuding Gilbert parents argued about everything from the display of banners to the proper place to eat snacks.

"The bickering has gone on so long," said Jill McKeever, a Finley Farms Elementary School chess mom, former association president and chess coach at Islands Elementary School. "It's gotten to this point now where we almost can't talk to each other."

What are they arguing about? Believe it or not, philosophy. Should scholastic chess emphasize fun and participation or winning?

"The philosophies of the organizations were always so different," said Christy Veit, a chess mom at Canyon Rim Elementary School. "They didn't get where we were coming from, and we didn't get where they were coming from."

The Burk club, which has won four consecutive state championships, trains with its own coach and focuses on winning. Other Gilbert schools take a more casual approach to chess.

Their coaches juggle eight or more clubs at the same time and root for all their players to do well at tournaments — even when the teams compete against each other. That has never made sense to the Burk parents.

"We don't see football, baseball or basketball coaches floating across schools in this district coaching at multiple schools," former Burk parent Lisa Haisley wrote in an e-mail. "I don’t think chess should either."

But now there are accusations of vote rigging and hostile takeovers.

Some chess parents say Burk families flooded the meeting. When they realized they didn't have enough votes to win, they stepped outside and called more friends on their cell phones.

Maneth, who earned a board position that night and now serves as president, said allegations that Burk staged a hostile takeover are false. He said Burk parents won the election because they offered the best vision for the future of Gilbert chess....

In the end, Burk parents emerged with control of the association they had previously shunned. And parents who had spent years building the association suddenly wanted nothing to do with it. The Gilbert chess world had turned upside down.

And who might you guess finds himself in the middle of this mess?

Many parents now take their children to tournaments organized by a rival group called SMARTChess. McKeever and three other Gilbert chess coaches started the nonprofit organization this summer.

One SMARTChess founder is Robert Tanner, the Gilbert coach who resigned this month from the U.S. Chess Federation executive board following an ethics reprimand. Tanner was disciplined in November following allegations that he manipulated tournament results in the early 1990s to boost his chess rating.

I can think of several directions this discussion might take. Here are a few questions you might want to ponder and comment on:

1. Should scholastic chess be casual or highly competitive?
2. Is parental involvement in organizing scholastic events a good thing? In the Boston area many scholastic events are organized by clubs (like the BCC) and independent organizers (e.g., Gus Gosselin).
3. What do you think about limiting coaches to working at only one school? Seems to me they find it hard enough to make a living working at several.
4. What's with Robert Tanner and controversy? I'd never heard of this guy until a few weeks ago and now suddenly he's everywhere.

*****
In a related note - At the Herb Healy, Harold Dondis mentioned that he had heard that Gus Gosselin was very ill. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

USCL ranks 2006 Games of the Week

At the US Chess League website, they have started a series ranking the 2006 Games of the Week from 1 through 13. The rankings are a group effort reflecting the opinions of League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade, NM Arun Sharma, NM Dennis Monokroussos and GM Alex Shabalov+WFM Elizabeth Vicary (working as a duo).

Number 12 on the list is Privman-Krasik from the Blitz's week 3 win over the New York Knights. The game featured Krasik's exciting Rook sacrifice 17...Rxe4!?

JG of JG's Master Quest fame takes exception to the ranking and argues that Ilya deserved better:

...I really think this really deserved some more credit in the voting. Imagine the match situation: Boston only won this match 3-1 so a loss for Krasik would have meant only a tie for the Blitz and Krasik still has the confidence to play the fantastic move Rxe4 when the consequences of a miscalculation would completely change the outcome of the match. I think it's a little strange not to take the situation in the match into serious consideration.

Strangely, in the USCL piece, the comments on this game from Shabalov/Vicary were censored by the league. While we'll probably never know why, JG speculates on a couple of possible explanations. My favorite is:

[Seattle Slugger's team manager] Clint Ballard pa[i]d off the judges to make sure Krasik would not finish near the top, but unfortunately this was included in the comment.

University of Maryland, Warsaw County

What with red shirt freshman, no show classes and "special" tutoring, big time college athletics strays far from the ideal of inter-school amateur competition. While most everyone knows that this is the case when watching football, basketball and hockey there's been little mainstream discussion of the problems which have plagued college chess. Instead, most of the coverage of college championships over the past few years has used the "little school from nowhere beats Harvard" theme. Of course the "little school", more often than not, is from Baltimore or Dallas.

This article in the Washington Post on the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship starts with the same "beating up on the Ivies" premise, but does afford a couple of paragraphs to the somewhat questionable practices which were used to build UMBC and UTD into chess powerhouses:

The room is thick with tension and intrigue, born partly of the controversy that has surrounded some of the more excessive recruiting practices. As recently as three years ago, several teams, particularly UMBC and UT Dallas, were paying full scholarships, plus cash stipends, to grandmasters as old as 40. Players had nominal course loads and took as long as eight years to graduate.

The overlords of collegiate chess introduced reforms, including a rule against grandmasters over age 25, a six-year limit on competing and a requirement that players maintain a grade-point average of at least 2.0 and at least a half-time course schedule. But UMBC and UT Dallas have stayed dominant by recruiting players from countries including Russia, Poland and India. UMBC's top two players are over 25, grandfathered in under the old rules.

Some players still think the game is rigged. "It's just buying players and championships, and that's not appropriate," said Johnny Sadoff, a Harvard student from Silver Spring. "They should be legitimate students."

The Robert Tanner chess improvement program

Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember anyone writing about this bit of US Chess politics:

A chess coach at 10 schools in the Phoenix metro area has resigned from the U.S. Chess Federation executive board under accusations he manipulated tournament results to gain his title as a chess master....

[Current USCF Executive Board Member Sam] Sloan's complaint alleges that [Robert] Tanner achieved the titles of master and "original life master" by playing repeated games in 1991 and 1992 within a closed group of friends that moved together among remote places such as Teton, Wyo., Wendover, Nev., and Ceres, Calif....

Sloan said the players in the group shared Tanner's home address, and none of the nine men except Tanner ever competed outside the group.

"They are quite clearly fake people," Sloan said. "They don't exist."

Tanner maintains he did nothing illegal. He said the matches actually occurred, and the ethics committee supported his claim that the opponents were real people.

However, Tanner acknowledges in his Sept. 15 response to the committee that he circumvented the "spirit of the regulations" in the early 1990s while working to regain the master title he held in the 1980s. None of the opponents, he said, were legitimate masters or even expert-level players.

As distasteful as it is to agree with an convicted alleged pedophile, it does seem that Mr. Tanner got caught with his hand in the "ratings" cookie jar. Here's another more detailed article.

USCL Fracas Redux

I thought it was over, but today Clint decided to fire another shell.

Update (10/25): ...and another one on his own site. Read "Boston's Ilya Krasik accuses Slugger manager of being insane" at Slugfest7.com.

Related Post: USCL Fracas

Heat or Light?

Apparently there was some controversy swirling around the US Chess League last week. I happened upon it somewhat inadvertently.

You may have noticed this line of text under last week's Blitz-Tempo match results:

Tennessee will have a 5 minute penalty on each board for submitting the lineup after the deadline.

Since I wasn't fully conversant with the rules governing this infraction, I checked them out. And, to be honest, having reviewed them I'm still not really sure where the 5 minute penalty came from.

Rule A9 covers the case where a team makes a change to their lineup after the Sunday night deadline. However, I didn't see a rule which specifically addresses the penalty for not submitting any lineup at all by the deadline. If A9 had been applied, i.e., if the late line-up was viewed as a change in lineup after the deadline on all four boards, then according to the rules each member of the Tempo should have been penalized 1/6th of their time (~12 minutes since they were playing G/75). So unless the league office does its mathematics in base 3, it's hard to figure out how 12 became 5.

While it probably would have been helpful for the Commissioner to provide a clarification on all this, since there didn't seem to be any complaints from Boston or Tennessee I figured there really wasn't much of a story here.

However, since I had now made a study of the rules, I became further perplexed when I noticed a related ruling in the San Francisco-Seattle match.

The lineup for this match has changed, and the time control on both boards 2+3 will be 85 minutes for San Francisco and 65 minutes for Seattle, due to the late lineup change by Seattle.

Obviously Seattle made a change to their lineup which affected boards 2 & 3. According to rule A9 if the change occurred prior to Monday 9:00pm then Seattle should have lost 1/6th of their time (~12 minutes) on these two boards, if by Tuesday 9:00pm, then 1/4th of their time (~19 minutes). So why did Seattle lose 10 minutes on these two boards and San Francisco gain the same amount? I suppose it might have been deemed the most appropriate way of docking Seattle 19 minutes, but nevertheless this approach to adjusting the clocks is not discussed in the rules.
While I was hung up in the mathematics of it all, it turns out that charges, counter-charges and accusations over the substance of the infractions were flying around elsewhere. Here are some relevant links for your reading pleasure:

• 10/11/06 USCL "rules" can change at anytime! - Seattle Sluggers Manager Clint Ballard
• USCL Rules page Tuesday 10/10/06 - as posted on Ballard's Slugfest7 website
• USCL Rules page Wednesday 10/11/06 - as posted on Ballard's Slugfest7 website
• USCL Rules page - as currently posted on the US Chess League website
• 10/11/06 Match Recap - Seattle Sluggers Manager Clint Ballard
• NW Chess Forum: USCL Rd. 7 - includes posts by both Clint Ballard and Commissioner Shahade
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - San Francisco Mechanics blog

I've read through all this material and, quite honestly, I still don't really understand who did what, who's right and who's wrong, what the current rules are now, or how the 5 min and +10/-10 min penalties were calculated. I certainly think it would be helpful if the Commissioner laid out his position on these matters and explained his rulings since none of this is currently covered on the official website. At the same time, I think Clint needs to get a grip. Making accusations about East Coast bias hardly helps his cause. The Sluggers were playing San Francisco after all, not New York. And if the Commissioner is trying to help the Knights this season, he's doing a pretty pathetic job of it.
*****
Speaking of New York, the Knights are under great pressure to win this week's match with the Blitz in order to maintain their slim hold on the last playoff spot in the Eastern Division. Here are the matchups - Boston has white on boards 2 & 4:

GM Eugene Perelshteyn - 2614 vs. GM Pascal Charbonneau - 2500
IM Igor Foygel - 2533 vs. IM Irina Krush - 2445
NM Charles Riordan - 2283 vs. IM Jay Bonin - 2354
NM Ilya Krasik - 2162 vs. Matthew Herman - 2172

Since LarryC has had his troubles with Pascal in past matches, Boston is substituting in their other GM (what a luxury!). I also like Boston's chances on the other three boards as well. Of course, by now it should be clear to everyone that waiting for JG's prediction before putting down your money is the prudent thing to do.