On May 13, 7:31 pm, wrote:
samsloan wrote:
During my one year on the board there were constant problems with
this. Bill Goichberg would use his position as USCF President to do
things without even telling the other board members. It started right
after I was elected but before I took office when Bill Goichberg wrote
five letters without board approval to the USCFs litigation lawyer
asking for ways to stop Sam Sloan from taking office. The legal bill
that the USCF had to pay just for responding to these five letters was
$4800.

False. They asked for a legal opinion on what would happen if the
Delegates tried to block you from being seated. Sloan 1 - Truth 0

Anybody who has actually seen the five letters written by Bill
Goichberg to Mike Matsler, the attorney who represents the USCF in
cases in court, has found it obvious that there letters were written
not because Goichberg was afraid that some other group would try to
stop me from taking office but because Goichberg himself wanted to
stop me from taking office.

If Goichberg had simply wanted an advisory opinion, he could have
consulted one of the many lawyers who are USCF members who would have
offered opinions for free, such as for example, Harold Dondis, Stephen
Jones, Harold Winston and many others. Goichberg asked Matsler about
this obviously because Matsler would have been the one to go to court
and file or fight the case to keep me out.

Later, Bill Goichberg did other things like deciding on his own
without asking the board that there should be four women players in
the US Championship and when only two women with reasonably high
ratings accepted Goichberg when down the list as token woman after
token women declined until finally two women were accepted who were
rated below 2200.

No one on the Board except you objected. If they had, four members
could have voted it down. Of course, it would be hard to find three
people who could stand the shame of voting with you. Sloan 2 - Truth 0

A lot of people objected. Did you read Joel Benjamin's article in New
in Chess? I should have explained that while Goichberg was letting in
two girls rated under 2200 he was excluding strong players rated over
2600 like Ben Finegold for example. Allowing two girls to play in the
US Championship whose only qualifications were that they were
attractive girls was ridiculous.

Worse than that, Bill Goichberg decided on his own to make the
formerly prestigious US Championship into an open Swiss tournament
where anybody could play. The entry fee for a rank beginner was
$20,000. Although no rank beginners accepted, this got many people
upset as it demeaned the prestige of the US Championship.

Since AF4C ran it as a Swiss for the last decade, I assume your
complaint is _only_ about allowing players to buy in. Since the
result was a modest increase in the prize fund, I doubt any of the
players would agree with you. I don't recall you making any
counter proposals to fund the tournament. As I recall, _your_
suggestion was that the USCF turn down the $50K donation and run it as
a round-robin in New York with a prize fund of $14K (which the USCF
did not have). Sloan 3 - Truth 0.

AF4C never let in anybody just because they were willing to pay a big
entry fee. Eric Moskow told me that he offered to pay $200,000 to Erik
Anderson so that he could play in the 2006 US Championship but was
turned down. However, by 2007 Moskow was only willing to pay $10,000
and he wanted to play online over the Internet which was not
acceptable.

As to there being no objection by the other players, Joel Benjamin
wrote in the 4/2007 issue of New In Chess magazine that he refused to
play in the 2007 US Championship, the first time in 23 years that he
had not played, for exactly that reason.

After this kept happening, I became so desperate to somehow get Bill
Goichberg removed as president that I even offered the USCF presidency
through an intermediary to Joel Channing, who I thought was a terrible
person.

Since Channing regarded you as a lower life form, I doubt you got much
of a response.

Apparently Channing believed that the 2007 election would result in a
deadlocked board and he as the man in the middle could become
president.

I am calling on the board to vote Bill Goichberg out of office right
now.

And I'm sure this will have just as much effect as Mad Marcus's calls
to the State Department. Face it, Sam. Nobody cares. (Well, you're
nobody, and you care.)

There are a lot of things on which I disagree with Goichberg, and I'm
not convinced by his new proposal, but he does have one major asset.
You. As long as you're his opposition, Bill looks awfully good.

The fiscal year ends on May 31 and when the results are out you will
see that the USCF will have lost another $300,000. Bill Goichberg will
have been USCF President for three consecutive years and every year
has shown a 6-digit loss. (The reported surplus of $3,000 last year
was fake. The real loss was about $150,000.)

If the board does not throw out Bill Goichberg as President and also
throw out Bill Hall as Executive Director after another loss of
$300,000, then every USCF member will blame all of the board members
for these horrific loses.

Sam Sloan