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, has published dozens of articles in Chess Life, and serves as 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 president of his homeowners association.

The harmony on the new Board is highly encouraging, despite some sniping from older USCF members who don’t care for the new titles.  Susan Polgar, Randy Bauer, Paul Truong and Jim Berry bring a diverse set of skills and experience, joining holdovers Bill Goichberg, Joel Channing, and myself. Look for positive developments! 

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 a number of 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 also proofread the magazine and write the regular “Mainstream Media Watch” column for the magazine. My service on USCF’s Executive Board helps keep me in touch with journalists and organizers around the country.

Alas, in one respect CJA from 2006 until August 2007 provided an analogue to Henry Kissinger’s aphorism that in academic politics, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low. (Despite growth in the last two years, our membership has never exceeded 160 nor our treasury the final 2006-07 fiscal year balance of $5854.)

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, disseminated both to members and non-members. 

My reelection as Secretary/Treasurer over this individual, with almost 71% of the vote, permits me to pursue a positive future for CJA, working with the other officers. However, eleven years is a long time, and I hope that a qualified member will offer to assume the position.

(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.