Goichberg's "Open Letter" regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match

Main

Date: 08 Nov 2008 06:36:02
From: samsloan
Subject: Goichberg's "Open Letter" regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match

Although Susan Polgar has for the last two years posted a new picture
of herself almost every day on her blogspot, showing where she is in
the world, be it India, Argentina, Sardenia, Scotland, Germany or
sometimes even America, she has posted no new pictures of herself
since the USCF served her with a summons and complaint on October 24,
2008. Nobody seems to know where Susan Polgar is right now and she is
not telling.

However, her blogspot is maintained by somebody in Philadelphia and
she is able to post there from her laptop, so we know her latest
thoughts. Yesterday, Susan posted an objection to the "Open Letter"
posted by Bill Goichberg regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match.

I find it noteworthy that Polgar wrote:

"As a board member of the US Chess Federation, I did not authorize
this letter nor have I seen this open letter before it was published.
You definitely do not have my permission to speak on my behalf. This
is the first time I am seeing it."

While I see nothing objectionable about Goichberg's letter and no
reason why Goichberg should have submitted this letter to a vote by
the board before posting it, I must point out that Goichberg did a lot
of things while I was on the board which the board most definitely did
not and would not have authorized.

One of the many examples was when Goichberg announced on the USCF's
home page at http://main.uschess.org that the 2007 US Championship
would be a 32-player two-game knock-out event played over the Internet
from regional centers, with a finals to be held in Las Vegas.

Not only had the board not voted on this event and format, we did not
even know about it. The only way we found out about this was to read
it on the USCF's website.

This was not the only instance of this. Goichberg also announced a
list of qualifying tournaments to the US Championship with 50% of them
being Goichberg tournaments and one more being a tournament organized
by Randy Hough, a fellow board member and political ally. Goichberg
also decided that four slots should be given to women no matter how
low rated, as a result of which two expert rated women played in the
US Championship whereas many grandmaster men did not get to play.
Again, all this was done without even telling the board that he was
doing it.

The 32-player knock-out event that was announced by Goichberg resulted
in tremendous objections from the players and the membership, all of
whom blamed us, the board, for this, not realizing that Goichberg had
done this on his own without even telling us.

Not only did Goichberg not have the player's support, he did not have
the money either. No sponsor had offered to sponsor this event.
Goichberg allowed a rumor to circulate that Merrill, Lynch was going
to sponsor this. However, Merrill, Lynch had never agreed to this. As
far as I know, Merrill, Lynch had never even been approached with this
idea. (Remember them? That was the famous former brokerage firm before
the Wall Street Bailout.) Goichberg was living in a pipe dream.

When the announced 32-player knock-out US Championship failed to take
place because there was no money to hold the event, Goichberg blamed
me, Sam Sloan, of all people to blame, when I had absolutely nothing
to do with it. Goichberg should not have announced this 32-player
tournament unless he had the money or at least signed contracts from a
sponsor, plus the agreement of the 32 players to play in it.

So, while I agree with Goichberg's complaint against the FIDE
President, in that Kirsan previously announced that the Kamsky-Topalov
match would take place in the Ukraine but now he is backing down, I
feel that Goichberg is the wrong person to make such a complaint when
he has a history of doing even worse things.

Sam Sloan

Date: 10 Nov 2008 08:17:00
From: The Historian
Subject: Re: Goichberg's "Open Letter" regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match

On Nov 10, 10:42=A0am, Taylor Kingston <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Nov 10, 10:04=A0am, samsloan <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I would like to remind Bill Goichberg that we are in the middle of a
> > major world-wide financial crisis that was caused entirely by the
> > United States of America chess federation members should bear in mind
> > that Henry Paulson (a relative of the chess player who lost to
> > Morphy?) paid himself nearly one billion dollars as Chairman of
> > Goldman Sachs, and that made him to be regarded as such a "financial
> > wizard" that he got the President and the Congress to vote $850
> > billion to restore to his old firm that he took the money out of.
>
> =A0 Um, Sam, is some punctuation missing in the above run-on sentence,
> perhaps? As written, it could well be construed as saying the world-
> wide financial crisis "was caused entirely by the United States of
> America chess federation."
>
> > Henry Paulson (a relative of the chess player who lost to
> > Morphy?
>
> =A0 That was Paulsen, not Paulson.

Sam Sloan has given us today's giggle.

Date: 10 Nov 2008 07:42:04
From: Taylor Kingston
Subject: Re: Goichberg's "Open Letter" regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match

On Nov 10, 10:04=A0am, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
>
> I would like to remind Bill Goichberg that we are in the middle of a
> major world-wide financial crisis that was caused entirely by the
> United States of America chess federation members should bear in mind
> that Henry Paulson (a relative of the chess player who lost to
> Morphy?) paid himself nearly one billion dollars as Chairman of
> Goldman Sachs, and that made him to be regarded as such a "financial
> wizard" that he got the President and the Congress to vote $850
> billion to restore to his old firm that he took the money out of.

Um, Sam, is some punctuation missing in the above run-on sentence,
perhaps? As written, it could well be construed as saying the world-
wide financial crisis "was caused entirely by the United States of
America chess federation."

> Henry Paulson (a relative of the chess player who lost to
> Morphy?

That was Paulsen, not Paulson.

Date: 10 Nov 2008 07:04:34
From: samsloan
Subject: Re: Goichberg's "Open Letter" regarding the Kamsky-Topalov Match

[quote="chessoffice"][quote="snits"]Hasn't it been par for the course
lately for FIDE to get a cut of the money from a match? I don't think
that is unique to Kamsky-Topalov.[/quote]

No, by itself that's not unusual. But the $750,000 prize fund was
officially guaranteed by FIDE five months ago. Having reneged on this
guarantee, FIDE should at least be willing to put up some significant
money for the players, including waiving its expectation of making a
profit from the match.

If FIDE simply added its share of the profit from Anand-Kramnik to the
Kamsky-Topalov match, and waived making a profit from either match,
added to what a bidder might provide there could be a very substantial
prize fund for Kamsky-Topalov, appropriate for a match of such
importance.

Bill Goichberg[/quote]

I agree with Artichoke hearts.

I would like to remind Bill Goichberg that we are in the middle of a
major world-wide financial crisis that was caused entirely by the
United States of America chess federation members should bear in mind
that Henry Paulson (a relative of the chess player who lost to
Morphy?) paid himself nearly one billion dollars as Chairman of
Goldman Sachs, and that made him to be regarded as such a "financial
wizard" that he got the President and the Congress to vote $850
billion to restore to his old firm that he took the money out of.
Paulson's firm otherwise would have gone out of business like Merrill
Lynch and Lehman Brothers did.

I do not see that we in the US are in a position to demand that Kirsan
honor a pledge he made, when his pledge was based on a guarantee by
Kamsky's manager, who claimed to have raised the money in the Ukraine
and as recently as a few days ago said that he had sent the money to
FIDE by wire transfer (but it still has not arrived).

Kamsky and Topalov should count themselves lucky to have been given a
back door route to get into the real World Championship, and remember
that this was a concession given to Topalov when he refused to compete
in the regular world championship cycle.

Sam Sloan