ADVICE TO SUSAN

I would counsel Susan Polgar to attend to what
she does well. She is a chess grandmaster, a chess
teacher, a chess promoter. The idea that she would
spend a significant number of hours weekly as a member
of the USCF Executive Board makes no sense to me.

Susan Polgar's friend Paul Truong knows chess
(his rating is not faked) is tough as nails and
evidently is able to promote GM Polgar and the royal
game. He would be a fine Executive Board member, and
if I were a member, I would cast my vote for him --
along with Sam Sloan and Mike Goodall.

I can't imagine how GM Polgar would long survive
among the cut-throats on the Executive Board and in
the USCF committee system. Many of those on the
committees are the absolute dregs: dismal, dull,
dreary, depressing and deadly. They are HORRIBLE and
HIDEOUS creatures.

First, there would be conflict of interest
problems. GM Polgar would have to surrender many
interesting chess and financial opportunities that she
deserves to have. Which ones? That will be for the
future to determine, but the pain will be there.

Secondly, there will be endless complaints to
the USCF Ethics Committee every time GM Polgar tries
to act like a ... chess teacher and a grandmaster,
which is, after all, what she happens to be!

Thirdly, there is the horror of several years of
gut-wrenching infighting. Enemies will be watching
and waiting for an opportunity to initiate legal
action. The courts are now part of the chess scene,
which sets us apart from the largely legally inactive
chess world of an earlier time.

Paul Truong will evidently have the drive -- the
willpower -- to advance an agenda. I don't see that
GM Polgar is required also to be on the Board. She
obviously has very little understanding of the injury
she will be doing herself by getting elected to the
Executive Board. Otherwise, she would be running for
the chess hills of Troitzky and Kubbel as well as
Kasparian and Korol'kov -- or to my favorite, Mark Liburkin.

Rght now -- this very moment -- is as good as
it will ever get in political terms for GM Polgar. As
in Iraq, what will come is guerrilla fighting and
countless IEDs along the political roadsides of the
United States Chess Federation.

That's our good old USCF, you know.