All things must pass. This decision wasn’t easy for me to make; in fact it’s overdue. I feel like I’m letting Fred and Marshall and Pearle down. But I just can’t do it anymore. The game has changed. The players have changed. I’ve changed. I would hope they would understand.

Scenes from the life of an organizer and coach:

The time one of my players was making a meteoric rise. He deserved to play on a higher board, and the website ratings supported that move. The organizers of the state scholatic tournament, however would not use the website ratings in his case. Another coach in the same event was allowed to do so.

The time one of my players, a borderline varsity player, walked up to me during a match, and threatened to throw his game, and with it quite possibly the match, if I wouldn’t guarantee him a seat on the team I would be taking to Nationals.

The time I actually had to forfeit a player over cell phone use, after three times making the announcement that I would, and having to listen to hours of whining afterwards, then having him stalk off in a huff, never to return (OK, so there was an up side to that one).

The time the USCF, then in the middle of a push for drug-testing chess players, endorsed a supplement (an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, of all things) to help you play better chess.

The moment I came to accept that getting high ranking chess players to come to your event was one thing, but that getting them to actually play a game (instead of regurgitate a few moves from theory and shake hands) against each other was quite another, and in the rare event that happened, getting either of them to turn in a copy of their scoresheet was impossible, anyway.

The many times I overheard players, who thought I couldn’t hear or understand what they were saying, “negotiating” the final tournament standings. 

The year I spent in the middle of a fued between officers of an organization that were old enough to know better.

The time a mother threatened to sue me because I dared ask if her precious and perfect little girl had moved one of my books to another table, one of middling commercial value but priceless to me sentimentally.

Just a few moments from the last decade or so. There are plenty more where they came from. Straws on the back of a camel.

This is my last year as an organizer; my last year as a coach was a few years back. I could continue a litany of reasons, but it all comes down to one very simple one: It’s just not fun anymore. I’ve spent upwards of $15K over the last decade or so on chess organizing and coaching, and while I don’t begrudge doing it I just can’t keep spending that for an activity that I no longer enjoy.

I’m tired. I’m tired of begging players to share their games with the organizer of the event they’re playing in. I had planned on publishing a book of the best games from the Western Open. Trouble is, only a few really good games are played there every year, and only a small minority of those ever made it into my hands, despite my entreaties.

I’m tired of complaints. In the same event I’ve heard complaints from players that the time control was too fast and too slow, that the entry fees were too high and not high enough. That the prize fund was generous and low.

I’m tired of dealing with a national organization that’s more interested in sniping at each other and playing with children than actually promoting chess tournaments to adults.

I’ll keep playing chess, and maybe even play in a tournament or two. But I won’t be behind the big table. I’ll be the grumpy old guy in the corner at the chess club. My interest in chess as a game continues (I just renewed my subscription to New In Chess, if you need proof of that). It’s just my interest in chess organizing and organizations that has evaporated.

And I’ll keep on writing about chess history here. The chess players of the past still interest me. The computer-generated progeny of today don’t.

Maybe I’m just old and grumpy, living in the past. Whatever it is, the prospect of tournaments today fills me with more dread than excitement. I refused point-blank the idea of making players pee in a cup for the absurd drug-testing schemes that were proposed. I’m even less thrilled at the prospect of following some kid into the bathroom to make sure he’s not running Fritz on his iPhone, or frisking players for dubious “hearing aids.”

It was a fun ride, but now it’s over. I just don’t fit anymore. I don’t relate. It’s time to step aside.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

First let me say I like Susan Polgar and think she’s got a good heart and sincerely wants to improve things in the USCF. While I’ve met the rest of her slate, the only other member I have any personal knowledge of is Randy Bauer, and probably the best way to indicate how I feel about him is to point out I’m already on record supporting him, and that I voted for him every time he ran.

But yes, I meant the sarcastic tone of the title. I cannot and will not support a slate. I’m done with slates. I’m wiping the slate clean, so to speak. I no longer can stomach them. I believe they’re as as much a problem as anything else in the USCF and they have to go. I know their rationale and understand it, but right in the title of Susan Polgar’s announcement, you get a clear statement of why the very idea of a slate is bad for the USCF.
“It Takes A Team To Make A Difference.” There’s a problem, right there. It doesn’t take a team. It takes an individual. When people stop thinking as individuals and start doing groupthink, we have problems.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. An organized group, marching in lockstep with one another, is one of the most powerful forces in the world. But power corrupts, and soon the group will be driving headlong down the road to oblivion, still making great time and travelling with great efficiency.

I don’t want political parties invading chess; they’re doing enough damage to my state and my country, thank you. Can’t they leave just one part of my life and loves unsullied? The best thing for chess is for the best and brightest of us to be willing to sit down together in a single room, to actually hear what we each think is important and why, and to only then start to hammer out a path to the future of chess that will include us all. We are not well served by electing people who already have an agenda, and who will have no check on their actions once elected.

There’s nothing in the world more critical to making good decisions than hearing multiple viewpoints, especially viewpoints from people who disagree with you. Your enemies are often the only ones willing to tell you the truth about the flaws in your plans; hearing them reminds you of your own humanity and failings. No single person or single group knows everything. Eyes that do not share your partisan blinders will see things that you have missed.

I firmly believe that. So I cannot and will not support producing yet another “instant majority” on the USCF EB. It’s a fatal flaw in the system, and so as much as I like the candidates in it that I know, I cannot bring myself to support the slate. To do so would be to perpetuate the problems. And to my mind, the fact that I may be in agreement with the slate only makes it worse; it places me in the position of oppressor rather than oppressed, and that I cannot abide.

The instant majorities that keep being created on the USCF EB are a cancer whose long-term effects are deleterious to the health of the body. They must be cut out, to save the whole. It may not be easy; worthwhile efforts seldom are. But in the name of long-term survival, some short-term pain must often be endured.

Candidate slates must be opposed if the USCF is to prosper. It is a matter of principle, a matter of survival not a matter of convenience. As with all principles, the true measure of their value is not whether you stand by them when the sun is shining, but rather when there is a price to be paid for adhering to them. And so with great reluctance but greater determination, I rise in opposition to the Polgar slate. Here I stand, I can do naught else.

We had great and serious agreement that we need to raise the image of chess among the non-chessplaying public. One effort was to try and move the rational discussion unto the USChess discussion forums, linking the high-level discussions directly with the USCF, and thereby improving the public impression at least of the organization. Except the discussion forums work with query strings, and are therefore not indexed by the major search engines, so the net effect is to keep the good discussions from being seen at all.

And the announcement was made by a member of the Executive Board that they knew a celebrity that was well-disposed towards chess, and had in fact hired a teacher for their child, and this person could be useful in promoting chess. The celebrity? Radio shock-jock Don Imus.

I’m just glad I hadn’t picked up my bottle at that point. I hate it when root beer goes up my nose.

I didn’t say, that particular phrase, but it’s a convenient enough distillation of what I did say, that it started me thinking: What is it we were actually deciding as we sat there at our tables?

As the USCF gathers at its annual meeting, in Oak Brook, what does actually get decided? Certainly no life and death decisions get made. Nor do any decisions affecting the physical welfare of thousands, much less millions. “It’s the life or death of chess” one of my accusers stated.

That statement troubled me. As I walked away I pondered those words. That was a serious charge; was I guilty? Chess has survived more wars, famines, plagues and pestilences than all of us gathered in that room could possibly imagine. Chess has seen mighty empires rise and fall, has seen wars long and short as well as narrow and wide. It has thrived while watching significant portions of the population of continents die.

And it struck me as sheer arrogant folly to seriously think any decision we could possibly make would somehow cause it to be snuffed out. True, decisions we make could easily snuff out our USCF, or even FIDE. But chess? Be serious. If anything lasts another five centuries, chess will.

What other game can so delight the mind, and so stir the intellect of humanity? It’s just chess.