Here are some of the stunning facts about the current state of the USCF:
Back in March 2003, the membership level of the USCF rose to 95,388. As of April 2009, the number is barely over 79,000 at 79,135. That is a loss of 16,253 members!
Financially speaking, the numbers are also bad. Here are some basic USCF numbers from the April 2009 financial report which was provided to me by the USCF Chief Financial Officer Joe Nanna:
Total Revenues: $2,952,904 (less $397,681 bequests = $2,555,223 of actual revenue) in 2009 versus $2,633,658 in 2008.
Total Membership Revenues: $1,457,224 in 2009 versus $1,568,324 in 2008.
(Down $111,100 from last year)
Total Expenses: $3,015,457 in 2009 versus $2,619,019 in 2008.
(We outspent the previous fiscal year by $396,438, which basically wiped out the bequests.)
Excluding the bequests, which clearly cannot be included in normal revenues, that means that USCF has lost, so far, nearly $500,000 in this fiscal year. (This number does not include more losses which were incurred in the month of May.)
The federation’s market share is also down. According to various sources, there are as many as 4-5 times more tournament chess players, especially younger players, who are not USCF members, than there are members of our national federation.
Because of incompetence, the USCF no longer owns the Book and Equipment business. The entire business had to be outsourced.
For the last few years, the USCF has not been capable of holding its own annual U.S. Men and U.S. Women’s Championships. It has to rely on the good will of generous individuals putting up money to save these prestigious events.
The USCF can no longer to fully fund the U.S. Men and U.S. Women’s Olympiad teams. Once again, it has to rely on the generosity of outside organizations or charitable individuals. The USCF is even incapable of sending our national team to the World Team Championship. And unless sponsorship can be found soon, the USCF either will not be able to send our “A” team and will have to resort to sending an amateur team to compete against the world’s best.
The USCF has no money to fund serious training programs for our most young talented male and female players. The USCF has no money to properly promote chess or the even just the basic agenda of its own mission.
How could a national organization, an organization which claims that it has no money to do many things for the benefit of chess and it members, afford to spend $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 or perhaps even more than $1,000,000 in legal fees for political purposes? How could a national organization, an organization which at one time had annual revenues over $6 million, sink this low? Finally, how can we fix the problems, to make things better, when the problems are being hidden and kept secret from the membership at large?
I will publish a full 8+ page report which includes major updates on the USCF legal woes (lawsuits and legal battles in seven different states), massive financial losses, abuse of power, unethical conduct, and dire situation for this federation (critical facts that the current USCF management is hiding from the membership at large), on Tuesday night. This is why change is needed or else the USCF may not survive. Stay tuned.
The only way to save the USCF is to throw Bill Goichberg, Jim Berry, and Bill Hall out the door and make sure their slate of Mike Atkins, Ruth Haring and Brian Mottershead won’t get elected. If they control the USCF for another 4 years, they’ll provoke more lawsuits which will for sure bankrupt the USCF.
No USCF member can allow this. The USCF corruption must end now.
The new board must report Goichberg, Hough, Hanken about their bribery involvement in July 2008 and Jim Berry, Bill Hall, Randy Bauer and others for covering it up. The USCF deserves better than these characters.
How much will the USCF lose due to lawsuits from board members, former board members, and future board members?
The last I heard, Bill Goichberg, Jim Berry, Bill Hall, Randy Bauer and Randy Hough are responsible for spending over $550K in legal fees in the past 2 years. I think these cases are only 30% underway. So expect the USCF to spend probably $1-$1.5 million unless Goichberg and Berry are thrown out the door.
To make matters worse, Bill Goichberg and Randy Bauer are still provoking more people to sue the USCF in the past 48 hours!
These guys think they can go around defaming, libeling and harming people like Polgar and Chess Cafe for 2 years and everyone will just walk away.
This is how Goicberg do things. He also used USCF money to go after GM Larry Evans some years ago. He hired private investigators to investigate Evans. Everything came up negative just as with Polgar now. But the members end up eating the bills.
I’ve been a member for 35 years and nothing has change. As long as Goichberg and Berry and now they just recruited Ruth Haring and Mike Atkins are around, the USCF is dead.
The last I heard, Bill Goichberg, Jim Berry, Bill Hall, Randy Bauer and Randy Hough are responsible for spending over $550K in legal fees in the past 2 years. I think these cases are only 30% underway. So expect the USCF to spend probably $1-$1.5 million unless Goichberg and Berry are thrown out the door.
To make matters worse, Bill Goichberg and Randy Bauer are still provoking more people to sue the USCF in the past 48 hours!
These guys think they can go around defaming, libeling and harming people like Polgar and Chess Cafe for 2 years and everyone will just walk away.
This is how Goichberg do things. He also used USCF money to go after GM Larry Evans some years ago. He hired private investigators to investigate Evans. Everything came up negative just as with Polgar now. But the members end up eating the bills.
I’ve been a member for 35 years and nothing has changed. As long as Goichberg and Berry and now they just recruited Ruth Haring and Mike Atkins are around, the USCF is dead.
Expect the issue of bribery against Goichberg, Hough and Hanke to play out in court. This is a very stupid thing they’ve done. They thought they could get away with it.
DISGUISING USCF LOSSES
Phil Innes claims that the USCF finished a half million in the red this past year, if one does not factor in rare monies from bequests. He argues that the Federation squandered money on legal actions. I would add, if one knows how our politicians work, they also provided for themselves fine provender and wine from what some good people left the USCF.
Phil’s points are evidently accurate.
Too — and here is the subject of my posting today — I received a message from someone within the USCF structure, whom many of us know, stating that Board members may already be aware of two further legal actions to be filed against the Federation. If true, one calls on Board members to make public what they know.
Is it true that tournament bids are being awarded on the basis of kickbacks and favoritism? I personally sat in on a Policy Board meeting in 1985 in which the Board members openly discussed having already decided to award the US Open to one bidder, though recognizing that another bid was superior. This was the famous instance in which Board member Jerry Hanken announced in public session that he already had the Los Angeles U.S. Open bid locked up before it was awarded and before presentations had been made!
I had been called into the meeting for my criticisms of Campomanes’ crooked termination of Karpov-Kasparov 1, and the Board members somehow forgot to tell me to leave. So I sat in on the meeting when in private session his cronies berated Hanken for announcing in advance that the Board intended to reward him.
Angrily, they told him that they were now forced to award the tournament to Portland, which was organized by an outsider, who probably had not been making the required payoffs. (The Portland event is commonly regarded as the finest US Open — along with the event in Hollywood, Florida — over the last quarter century.)
At one point, members of the Policy Board realized I was still in their midst and sent me packing pronto. I was ordered not to divulge what I had heard.
That is the crookedness inside the Federation. One can bet that odds are current members of the Board are arranging tournament bids for their financial or political benefit. The penny-ante crookedness of USCF chess politicians is really quite remarkable.
Randy Bauer ran repeatedly for office so as to join them. His attempt to disguise the huge Federation loss tells us what we need know about this worthy character…
Yours, Larry Parr
Former Chess Life Editor
“So expect the USCF to spend probably $1-$1.5 million unless Goichberg and Berry are thrown out the door.”
It’s called a classaction lawsuit against these bums!
Let’s start one immediately!
– Yadda yadda yadda. What a tiresome bore. You gonna sue me over that statement, too?
– You talk too much and act too little.
– If you wish to go forward with your claims of a lawsuit, all l can say is, bring it on.
Quotes from USCF VP of Finance in FIDE politics forum. These were made to a chess player in Vermont.
Bill Goichberg: Although Russell did complain about the non-magazine memberships, he has no case there (non-magazine memberships existed when he began as our vendor and the contract does not promise to abolish them), and his suit was mainly about other things. The matter will not be decided in court and USCF has requested arbitration in Tennessee, as we have the right to do under the contract. Had Russell not filed suit, we still would have requested arbitration as we believe we are due money.
Bill Goichberg
You think that Hanon Russell has no case but he is a lawyer and he obviously things differently.
By the way, Hanon Russell used to represent the USCF in litigation. Have you forgotten about that?
The important point is that Hanon Russell told you he was going to sue if you followed a particular course of action, and you did it anyway. So the USCF got sued.
Comparing “no magazine memberships” to the current situation is inappropriate. The number of “no magazine members” was always small, almost insignificant. Now, however, no regular members get Chess Life Magazine. That is a vast difference, and that is why Hanon Russell filed a lawsuit.
Why not give us an update on the current statue of the litigation? You have not yet told the membership what this lawsuit is all about.
SS
Goichberg, Hall, and Jim Berry are hiding this lawsuit and the status of other lawsuits from the USCF members. While under an exclusive contract with our vendor CC, Bill Hall and Goichberg were involved in making deals with another vendor while disregarding the “exclusive contract”.
Instead of trying to fix the screw up, they provoked the exclusive vendor to sue and he did. This is a loss of $150,000 in guaranteed revenues a year + damages the USCF has to pay to the vendor in court.
So the USCF vendor, USCF sponsors, Polgar and everyone else are crazy while Goichberg, Jim Berry and Randy Bauer continue to provoke more lawsuits against the USCF.
Instead of settling the case for $1 to spare the USCF, these guys hide behind the USCF wall to protect themselves. But their candidates Haring and Atkins went on the record supporting more lawsuits. How do they plan to pay for it? They USCF is out of money.
They don’t care because it’s not their money. Bill Goichberg is also making the USCF pay for the legal fees of his own company Continental Chess and his buddies. This is highly unethical and I think also illegal.
I blame Goichberg for letting what was a lawsuit by Sam Sloan that was dismissed almost as quickly as it was filed escalate into the War of the Roses. As President of the Executive Board, Goichberg has had many opportunities to show leadership skills and has missed every single one. I am not voting for him or any of the candidates that he recommended in his heavy handed mailings.
I think it’s against the uscf bylaws to let the membership know about this information … so we should expect another lawsuit … since the uscf has a lot to prove with money it could care less that it had.
Actually one of the reasons membership is going down can be attributed to the internet. $42 a year for membership is a bit steep for people like me, who don’t play in tournaments. There are many online chess sites (some of which are free),where you get to play chess anytime, usually get a rating to gauge how strong you are, and get much much instruction & learning, than the USCF provides. One site in particular is Chess.com
which is free for basic, allows you unlimited correspondence & live chess, and offers many learning tools. The USCF is outdated, needs to come up with a much more affordable membership plan, and definitely needs to come up with an online site that is competative with the ICC & Chess.com, and dozens of online sites that right now are better than anything the USCF offers. This is the 21st century USCF, economic times are tough & membership to them is not only a luxury for most Americans these days, but also is acking in quality.
Polgar does what she said she would do. She said from day one that she’ll fight all the way to show he innocense and this is another political scam from Goichberg, Berry, Hough, Hall and Bauer. She puts her money where her mouth is.
Instead of backing off and apologize, Goichberg and Berry decided to bankrupt the federation. These guys are used to doing this and people just simply walked away. This time Polgar fought back and they’re stuck. Nice going guys!
Polgar does what she said she would do. She said from day one that she’ll fight all the way to show her innocence and this is another political scam from Goichberg, Berry, Hough, Hall and Bauer. She puts her money where her mouth is.
Instead of backing off and apologize, Goichberg and Berry decided to bankrupt the federation. These guys are used to doing this and people just simply walked away. This time Polgar fought back and they’re stuck. Nice going guys! The USCF members should sue all these guys to get their money back.
Years ago the USCF probably had a near-monopoly on books and equipment. Now there are so many internet sources that I doubt that the USCF can make much money on books and equipment anymore.
When I joined the USCF they were trying to get to 12,000 members.
http://uschess.blogspot.com/2009/05/uscf-belongs-to-members.html
I’m not an American and I don’t understand how Goichberg’s “gang” can hang on to power if they’re as corrupt as Susan and the previous posters say they are. Isn’t America the bastion of democracy? How come they apparently still enjoy the support of the clear majority (despite the “exodus” of a good number of members)? Can this be just a “one camp vs another” situation? In fairness to the other side, can Susan post any response from them?
Easy. He controls Chess Life, the USCF website, and he’s a tournament director. Many TDs work for him and he controls them. A perfect example is Mike Atkins who’s on his slate. He controls the mailing list. It’s like a mafia monopoly on 64 squares. LOL
We need Obama as USCF President.
If only you and your husband were executives of USCF it would never have gotten into this mess! Oh, wait. How much is the USCF spending on Truong-Polgar lawsuits? (You obviously won’t post this, but it needs to be said.)
Hmmm…. Your post is published. Guess you’re wrong. You’re just another one taking pot shots at the victims instead of the perpetrators. Polgar and Truong were elected by the members. They have done nothing wrong except for being on the same board with Goichberg and his puppet Jim Berry.
The USCF after spending over $500,000 couldn’t prove a lick. Just like Goichberg couldn’t prove a lick after spending USCF members’ money to go after GM Larry Evans. A familiar pattern of abuse of power?
Goichberg, Hall and the rest of the incompetent idiots have no right to use USCF members’ money to go after anyone without the delegates’ approval. Goichberg is using USCF members’ money to pay for his own private for profit company CCA. Why is that? What do you have to say about that?
So by being on the board, the USCF and their fellow board members are allowed to libel, defame, and destroy them? I think not.
And the insurance IS paying for the USCF defense as well as the ED and Goichberg, Berry, Bauer, Hough. The $500,000 Goichberg, Berry and Hall spent are to go after USCF members, volunteers, EB members and delegates. Obviously you have no clue of what you’re talking about and just simply repeat Goichberg’s BS.
Did Goichberg mention about why the USCF is being sued in 6 other states? Doesn’t that tell you that the USCF leadership is doing something wrong to be sued by everybody? Did Goichberg mention that he was caught along with Jerry Hanken and Randy Hough in a bribery scheme? Of course not!
If you want to destroy and bankrupt this federation vote for Goichberg, Berry, Atkins and Haring.
How come Jim Berry and Bill Goichberg don’t discuss about their roles of being sued by ChessCafe for violating the exclusive contract with the vendor, a move which costs the USCF $150,000 a year + damages in court + attorneys’ fees?
Why are they hiding the fact that they’re an incompetent pair and should never be allowed to run for the board again?
“We need Obama as USCF President.”
Obama means Goichberg in Kenyan.
Doofus.