I have not wanted to discuss this case, but it has become so newsworthy that it would be wrong not to mention it, especially as it will likely cast a pall over the US chess scene for some time to come. As you have probably already heard,
Sam Sloan has filed suit against Paul Truong, Susan Polgar, and the USCF, seeking to void the recent election, reinstate his own position on the board, and hold new elections due to election fraud. That fraud amounts to the Trulgar camp making a number of misrepresentations, including: posing as Sloan and others on the internet to post highly defamatory statements about Sloan and other candidates and concealing the marriage of Truong and Polgar from the electorate (both of which appear pretty much proven). You can read
the lengthy, sometimes rambling, and artfully written filing online (also available from
Sloan's website). It is worth reading for some of the interesting facts, opinions, and speculations it reveals. Some may wish to balance that by also reading
Bill Goichberg's assessment of Sam Sloan and his character.
Dylan Loeb McClain has done an excellent job of covering the story for
The New York Times and in his
Gambit weblog:
Other worthwhile commentary and coverage around the net includes:
5 comments:
defamation claims must be pled with particularity, but sloan goes overboard with so much irrelevant background info that it seems his true audience is not the court but the USCF public. sloan knows formal court pleadings will receive more attention/respect than if he posted the same charges on his "dirty old man" website.
Yes, that is a very good point. And it certainly is quite the "dirty old man" website, which often goes unmentioned in commentary (including this one). That's probably why people were willing to believe for so long that Sloan was posting so many usenet messages: they were just vulgar enough to sound like he wrote them.
I checked out Susan Polgar's website and found a very disturbing post which resembled a love-letter to mass-murdering Communist revolutionary, Che Guevara, which was quite out of tone with the mostly chess-centered blog.
I live close to her Polgar chess club- the sign out front says "...Susan Polgar, World Chess Champion...".
Wouldn't "...former Womens' World Chess Champion..." be a lot more honest?
'Trulgar': best neologism of the year. :)
About Che post here is the link:
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007/10/cuba-using-chess-to-honor-che-guevara.html
Very interesting (comments).
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