Elected to the US Chess Federation Executive Board, where he serves as Secretary, in 2006, Randy is an active player and former master. He’s been a National Tournament Director since 1985, having directed several national championships (including the US Open, US Championship, and National High School), and an International Arbiter since 1989. He served as technical director in the USCF office, 1983-86, on the Executive Board previously (1990-93), and has chaired several USCF committees. He is also an organizer, Southern California Federation board member, president of the Pasadena Chess Club, has taught chess in the public schools, coached the eighth-place team at the 2009 National High School Championship,  published dozens of articles in Chess Life magazine, and is the outgoing secretary/treasurer of the Chess Journalists of America.

Randy is a Vietnam veteran. With a BA from UC Berkeley and an MA from UC Riverside, he was an organizational development specialist, budgeter, and government affairs representative for the City of Los Angeles before retiring in 2005. He is also a member of the Los Angeles County Republican Party Executive Committee and president of his homeowners association.

I look forward to the end of my term in August 2009. The 2006-2007 term was marked by the disruptive antics of Sam Sloan, and when he was defeated, Susan Polgar and Paul Truong joined (after their marriage was belatedly revealed). Since then, another Sloan suit against the Federation, Truong’s refusal to cooperate in an investigation of thousands of “Fake Sam Sloan” postings, and the repeated hacking of my e-mail by Polgar’s web master (securing confidential legal documents that were promptly posted on her webpage) have set off a wave of litigation that threatens the Federation’s financial stability. Throughout, Bill Goichberg’s leadership, as well as the support of Jim Berry and Randy Bauer, has kept us on as steady a course as could be imagined under the circumstances. The Federation’s future depends on the reelection of Bill (who cannot succeed himself as President) and Jim; I’m also voting for Ruth Haring and Mike Atkins, though Mike Nietman is another good choice. And the removal of Polgar and Truong from the Board would be a highly salutary step. To quote former candidate Brian Lafferty, “Chess is the most beautiful game ever created. Just ask any kid at a scholastic tournament or an octogenarian playing across the board from you. Chess will always survive. The USCF may not.”

Mission statement: “The CJA is an American organization of chess journalists created to promote high quality chess journalism, to provide assistance to the working journalist through articles and contacts and to recognize chess journalism at its best through an annual awards program.” You can learn more about this organization on our webpage, www.chessjournalism.org, and view back issues of the quarterly Chess Journalist in PDF.

For the last 13 years I’ve contributed countless hours to CJA’s success as Secretary/Treasurer, by logging receipts, maintaining the membership list, generating labels, coordinating magazine printing and mailing, taking meeting minutes, preparing financial statements and budgets, and maximizing asset interest. I’ll be turning these duties over to Ira Lee Riddle in August. I also proofread the magazine and write the regular “Mainstream Media Watch” column for the magazine.

Alas, in one respect CJA for the past several years has provided an analogue to Henry Kissinger’s aphorism that in academic politics, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low. (Despite recent growth, our membership has never exceeded 160 nor our treasury the final 2007-08 fiscal year balance of $5956.)

Another Board member pointed to some deficiencies in record keeping, which I acknowledged and rectified. That apparently only whetted his appetite, and he then made a number of wild accusations (accusing me of embezzling from both CJA and my homeowners association) , disseminated both to members and non-members. My reelection as Secretary/Treasurer over this individual, with almost 71% of the vote, merely led to more accusations and sour grapes. I hope that my successor’s volunteer efforts will elicit a more positive response!

(This satire won the Chess Journalists of America award as best humorous article for 2006-07.) 

Complete exhaustion was setting in. After days of back-and-forth e-mails and then a two-hour conference call, the Executive Board had approved the U.S. Championship bid from Stillwater, Oklahoma. Such formulations as “Only show in town” and “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” though trite, were quite apropos in this case.

Yet I kept thinking of the one Board member who, after wasting an inordinate amount of our time on certain retired players and asking us to use USCF money to track down someone who was impersonating him on the Internet, had found no less than ten reasons to object to this Championship bid – without having an alternative of his own.

But as my head dipped over the keyboard and the arms of Morpheus slowly enveloped me, I suddenly found myself in…

New York City, where the U.S. Championship was being held. And not at the Marshall Club or some such pedestrian venue, but at Carnegie Hall!

Of course, Kamsky, Onischuk, Nakamura, and Shabalov were there. But there was more, much more! Bobby Fischer, his rights restored after a certain Executive Board member led a Million Man March on the State Department, proudly sporting a tattoo of his newly-issued USCF ID number!! Ray Weinstein, deinstitutionalized through the efforts of that same EB member, playing as strongly as ever!!! The shades of Fine, Reshevsky, Marshall, Pillsbury, and Morphy, summoned forth by the powerful incantations “Everybody knows that…” and “It is perfectly obvious that…” !!!!

And as Polgar, Truong, Goichberg, Hough, and the myriad other previous skeptics fell to their knees in gratitude, the organizer manifested himself in the spot once graced by the likes of Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Stravinsky, Toscanini, and Bernstein. Yes, it was The Real Sam Sloan Himself, and he bestrode the hall like a colossus, bellowing, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

I woke up in a cold sweat.