The young Chinese team dominates – Photo courtesy of ChessBase
L to R: Huang Qian, Zhao Xue, Hou Yifan, Sheng Yang and Ruan Lufei
After crushing Russia and Poland 4-0 and Vietnam 3.5 – .5, China continued to dominate Ukraine and Armenia 3.5 – .5 in the Women’s World Team Championship. The only team that held China to a 2-2 tie was Georgia.
I don’t think the question is if China will win the Women’s World Team Championship, it is by what margin they will win this event by?
I am very happy to see the young Chinese stars doing so well and I would like to congratulate my friend Xie Jun, former women’s world champion. Her success in chess made an incredible impact for chess in China and her government and federation knew how to take advantage of this. They allow her to create chess programs and help her develop the next generation of talents and this success speaks for itself.
At the same time, I am sad for chess in this country. In 2002-2003, Paul Truong and I created the US Women’s Olympiad Chess Training program. The US women’s teams have never won a single Olympiad medal up to that time. We came home with an unprecedented 2 Gold and 2 Silver medals and we even defeated the invincible Chinese team in the head to head match. As a reward for the team’s success after nearly 2 years of training, hard work and ultimate sacrifices, the USCF politicians refused to pay the team members bonuses as stated in the contracts which were written by the USCF. The program was also promptly cancelled.
Without support from the federation, I decided to do things on my own through the Susan Polgar Foundation. History was made. 3 major all-girls events were created and they are fully funded by me and my foundation through volunteers and sponsors. The Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls is in its 4th year, the Susan Polgar National Open Championship for Girls is entering its third year and the 2nd annual Susan Polgar World Open Championship for Girls will be held in a few weeks in Las Vegas.
I am also running boys’ events as part of my plan and vision from a few years ago. I said that I wanted to give the girls a one year head start with these events and I will include the boys starting the second year. I kept my words. The 3rd annual Susan Polgar National Open Championship for Girls and the 2nd annual Susan Polgar National Chess Challenge for Boys will be held in South Texas in January 2008 and with the help of the local volunteers and supporters, I expect the number of total participants to be between 1,500 – 2,000 players!
There will be college scholarships, laptop computers and many other cool prizes, all funded by me, the Susan Polgar Foundation, sponsors and supporters. The USCF does not contribute anything to these events. But the USCF benefits a great deal because these events bring in new memberships, renewals and ratings fees, etc.
It also helps motivate our young players to compete and stay in chess with the college scholarships angle. On top of that, I am also encouraging siblings, parents and coaches to participate by creating open sections for everyone. Scores of parents and siblings will be counted for family / sibling prizes.
This is one of my visions for chess. I want to make our game more popular. I want to encourage family bonding and activities. I want to give our players incentives to play and stay in chess. And everything has been funding by me, my foundation, sponsors and supporters. Not only the USCF does not help, some of our chess politicians do not like this. They cannot stand to see progress and success. So guess what is the new game plan of the chess politicians now?
I will give you a few quotes from a current USCF board member in the past 24 hours:
– She has been told in no uncertain terms that next year she will not be allowed to publicize a “Susan Polgar National Open” or a “Susan Polgar World Open”.
– Chess Life magazine will refuse to advertise her tournament or list it in the TLAs…
First of all, no board member has ever spoken to me about it. But malicious lies are spread every single day and other board members sit back and support this idea of allowing board members to do or say anything they wish. They even created an officially sanctioned USCF forums for this to take place. Not even one current board member spoke out against this kind of destruction.
I was told that nothing can be done until August. Why August? Because the election is over by then. Convenient, isn’t it? And they expect people to buy this. They do not like to see anyone having success in promoting chess. This is the mentality “if we don’t succeed, you can’t either because that will make us look bad and we won’t allow that to happen.”
As GM Andy Soltis just pointed out his his NY Post article, the US has very few home grown talents. Why? Just look at the actions of our chess politicians. How can chess grow in this country when chess players, organizers, supporters, volunteers or sponsors are being chased away? I am funding these events with outside money and the USCF wants to shut me down and not allow these kids to compete. Shocking but true!
Friends and colleagues, this is the kind of behind the scene things that you do not know about and things like this went on for decades. This is how chess politics work and this is why one supporter, volunteer and sponsor after another continue to walk away from chess for good. I hope you understand why this upcoming USCF election is so important. The future of the USCF is at stake. Even if I win the election, there is absolutely nothing I could do to help the USCF or end this path of destruction unless I have a team of qualified people and a board majority to stop this pattern of failure and unethical conducts.
I am very thankful for the encouragement and support of countless parents, coaches and players from across the country. I am also very thankful for the modern technology which allows me to speak out. The chess politicians can no longer silence the truth. Just remember what I said before. How can we expect different results if the same people are elected year after year?
Nothing will happen as long as these same people are running the USCF. Everyone can see the conflict of having Mr. Goichberg run his own for profit Continental Chess Association and non-profit USCF. Your events are a direct competition to his CCA for profits events. I have nothing against Mr. Goichberg but this has gone on too far. I hope you and your team of Korenman, Bauer and Truong will be elected so positive changes can finally start to happen. Good luck!
Hello,
may be someone will understand now why R.J. Fischer has had so many problems with the federation in the past.
Regards
Pony.
Vote for Polgar, Korenman, Bauer and Truong and let them clean up the USCF>
I’m really disgusted with the behavior of our leaders. And don’t forget that the people who endorsed and campaign for the convicted felon Sam Sloan to get elected to the board and promptly destroy the sponsorship from the AF4C are now endorsing and campaigning for Stephen Jones, Joe Lux and Jim Berry. Should we trust their judgement? No. Jones was asked by Hal Bogner to run and Lux is Bill Goichberg’s guy and on Goichberg’s payroll. But again, like the last poster, Bill thinks there is no conflict of interest in this.
I have just finished reading this article. So much is at stake here. Although I am not an American citizen and this election is not direct concern of mine, I am quite confident that a strong Susan Polgar is good for American chess and to chess world wide. I have no idea how American chess politics work and what is your team’s realistic chance to win. This being stated I call upon all influential people to put a last effort and make the right move for American chess and help Susan and her team win this election. For what it’s worth you have got my support, Susan.
Abie Weiler
Israel.
Also I want to congratulate China women players for their big achievement. I followed some of the games and I was so impressed by the precision and their high level of game, finding the right moves and keeping their head and winning. I saw some nice positional victories and some games with wild attacks and braves defenses. This is truly a remarkable achievement and I am also very happy for them, as they deserve it. These women are super heroines. One thing I noticed is that I don’t know how to pronounce rightly their names and therefore I tend to forget them. But their names should be remembered.
A lot of people may not realize that by virtue of their finish in the 2006 Chess Olympiad the U.S. Women’s Olympiad team had the right to compete in the First Women’s World Team Chess Championships – but of course we HAD no team together to compete and even if the team members had been available, would the USCF have paid to send them to the competition? I don’t think so! It really bothers me that our country could not even field a team! And it really bothers me that we do not have more home-grown chess professionals. It is a sad testiment to the state of chess in the USA. Scholastic chess is important for many reasons, obviously, but we must pay more attention to our adult and professional players too.
Janet Newton
The USCF is a muddled mess.
They can’t even clean up there web page.
After reading this blog I went to there web page to apply for membership so I could vote.
I read that the price was dropped to $39. But the link takes you back to the old site with an application form of $41. Not a big deal but if they muddled their interface to the chess world on the web what would they do with something complicated. I emailed they about the mix-up. Lets see how long it takes to fix?
The USCF is a muddled mess.
They can’t even clean up there web page.
After reading this blog I went to there web page to apply for membership so I could vote.
I read that the price was dropped to $39. But the link takes you back to the old site with an application form of $41. Not a big deal but if they muddled their interface to the chess world on the web what would they do with something complicated. I emailed they about the mix-up. Lets see how long it takes to fix?
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants.”
The USCF is ran by a group of small-minded tyrants that do not have America’s chess reputation as their #1 priority. It’s time for change. IF Susan’s team is not elected (and folks, watch out for the possibility of current USCF politicians tampering with the results…has anyone thought about this?) there must be a way to BEGIN
a new organization!
the next generation of American’s could have top-class chess players if we had a good national organziation that cared. Susan works hard with young people to help nurture their interests in chess and we can all see the great results she has had. And this is just ONE PERSON doing so much.
Just think what could happen if more of our better known chess players would join together and form a NEW American Chess Organization? If the current board is not voted out, I would like to know why other people might be against the prospect of starting a new organziation to represent chess in the U.S.?
This is not such a revolutionary idea. the USCF is rotten to its core and corrupt. It’s time for change.
You’re right. This group of chess politicians are so corrupt. They’re hindering the development of chess in the US but they don’t care. They need to go. Schultz has been known to leak info to Sloan for years. Dubeck is endorsing Sloan to destroy his opponents. They’re a bunch of ego maniacs.
I have the same sentiment as some of the other posters. I’m very disappointed in the performance of Mr. Schultz and Goichberg. They should have embraced Susan and asked her to help the USCF. Not only they didn’t help her, they went out of their way to stop her from helping us chess. That’s terrible.
Chess is successful in China, India, and Russia not because their societies (each is different from the other) or federations alone but because of the people at every level. There are politics at every level and in every federation/country. One can’t stop corruption if there is only one voice. Trasparency is the key to stop corruption and encouragement to study and play chess at every level, starting with preschool and making schools at least not penalize those students who play chess, is the key to have more domistic chess latents.
In order to fix the USCF, the current management has to go. I’ve lost all respect for Goichberg for lying to the uscf members. I checked with Mr. Dewain Barber and he did confirm that he asked Paul to help his boys and that Paul never approached him about this. Goichberg supported Sam Sloan’s position and they purposely lied to the USCF members. Schultz went one step further by trying to interfere with the welfare of the kids. This is chess politics at its worst.
Susan, you are absolutely correct and China’s successful chess program shows what could happend in the USA if only we had a professional team doing the best for chess advancement. Susan, you have done so much these past years without the USCF and I agree with the other post, if your team is not elected and USCF is turned into a great organization instead of a rotten organization it is today maybe the time has come to begin a new organization. I am at the point now if I do not see your team elected I will no longer support the USCF and quit as so many of my fellow chess players have done in the last 5 years. These players use to play in tournaments a lot but have quit over disgust with the USCF.
On a recent Alaska chess cruise I had the great pleasure of meeting both GM Polgar and FM Truong. I was most impressed with their passion for chess. On Friday June 1, I received a rather odd orange and black postcard in the mail from Bill Goichberg that was quite derogatory toward GM Polgar’s and FM Truong’s campaigns for the USCF Executive Board, claiming that the 2 were running “negative” campaigns. Several thoughts come to mind. For one, I’m not positive, but isn’t it a bit negative to say that others are negative? For another, who is paying for these postcards – mailed at the “presorted first class mail” rate! More to the point, why is someone going to such great expense to attack 2 accomplished candidates and relegate them to the “Other Candidates” section of the postcard, as if to trivialize them? And when speaking to fellow chess players, isn’t it customary to refer to players by their earned titles? Then too, who gave my USCF membership name and address for use in a direct mail campaign, and do all candidates for office have access to this list? Did all USCF members receive this same postcard? Forgetting (if one can) the direct attack on 2 fine candidates, something suspicious is afoot. Even a class B player like me can see one move deep!
That’s why I voted for you and the others you recommended. It’s ridiculous that the current officers of the USCF don’t care about chess.