By Dennis Monokroussos

http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1192490748.shtml

Sloan vs. Polgar & Truong: Correcting Misrepresentations


There's a nasty little brouhaha involving GM Susan Polgar and her
husband, FM Paul Truong, on one side and Sam Sloan on the other. I've
read a bit about this (this BCC post is a good place to start for
those who want to go slogging through this mudhole), but have
steadfastly avoided the temptation to comment about this. (The gist,
in a sentence, is that Sloan accuses Polgar and/or Truong of writing
inflammatory posts in his (Sloan's) name on various chess websites.)

Unfortunately, I discovered yesterday that Sam Sloan decided to drag
me into this dispute by blatantly misrepresenting something I wrote on
this blog a couple of years ago. Some of you may recall that I wrote a
post (back on September 5, 2005) called "Go, Nona!". The post
celebrated some recent accomplishments by and accolades for the former
women's world champion, Nona Gaprindashvili, and en passant I took the
opportunity to express a critical opinion of the sometime claim by
Susan Polgar to be the first woman to earn the grandmaster title. (See
the post for details.)

To my horror, Sam Sloan has written the following:

Dennis Monokroussos reports that Polgar and Truong have posted to his
blog under 36 different fake names. He has banned all 36.

What???? In addition to the strange "reports", which makes it sound
like something that just happened (as opposed to a series of two-year-
old events), the claim that I single out and blame Polgar and Truong
is absolutely, positively false. Sloan next gives the URL of the third
Chess Mind post mentioned above (where I never offer any names for the
culprit(s)), and then continues

This happened after Monokroussos posted an article entitled "Go,
Nona!" in which he celebrated Nona Gaprindashvili as the first chess
grandmaster.

Gaprindashvili would have had to play in St. Petersburg 1914 to
receive that honor. Let's try this: she was the first woman to receive
the grandmaster title.

The 36 fake posters replied that Nona Gaprindashvili was not a real
grandmaster. Susan Polgar was. Monokroussos found it strange that all
36 posters that said that claimed to be in different parts of the
world, yet they all had the same IP address. He reports, "overweening
Polgarites in the past were all just this same person".

Again not quite right, though my rebuttals here concern minor points.
First, there were more than 36 posters - that figure applies to the
second post. Second, the quotation is from a comment of mine to the
post - it wasn't part of my "report". As I stated in the quotation
above (this post's fourth paragraph), it might have been one person,
but it might have been several. I don't know.

In any event, returning to the most important point, I make no
statement about the identity of the person in question. If, therefore,
any of you know Mr. Sloan or post to his site please ask him to change
his post to align it with the truth. Likewise, Mr. Sloan, if you're
reading this, please make the proper corrections.

Blecch to the whole lousy situation.