Samuel Howard Sloan (born September 7, 1944 in Richmond, Virginia), is an American chess journalist, publisher, and frequent Usenet poster. While having no formal legal training, he once orally argued a case in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Sloan was born in Richmond, in 1944, and his family later moved to Lynchburg. Both his parents were state-licensed professionals and government employees. Sloan studied chess from an early age. Sloan attended the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in mathematics, but did not earn a degree.
While attending Berkeley, a center of student protest during the social unrest of the 1960s, Sloan became the 1966-67 president of the Sexual Freedom League. His book Sex Marchers, co-authored with SFL founder Jefferson Poland, called for sexual emancipation.
After leaving Berkeley, Sloan worked two years for the Wall Street Investment Banking firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. in the over-the-counter trading department. In 1970, he established Samuel H. Sloan & Co., a registered broker-dealer primarily trading over-the-counter stocks and bonds. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought civil actions against Sloan & Co. in 1971—1975 alleging he had failed to maintain adequate books and records. In 1975, the SEC revoked Sloan's broker-dealer registration. After years of litigation, Sloan in 1978 prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Sloan argued the case pro se even though he was not an attorney. The opposing attorney was Harvey Pitt, who was later Chairman of the SEC from 2001 to 2003. Sloan won before the U.S. Supreme Court 9-0. Sloan is the last non-lawyer to argue before the court. Building a Better Advocate, Tony Mauro, The American Lawyer. October 11, 2002 Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion stated that "During this series of suspensions respondent Sloan, who owned 13 shares of CJL stock and had engaged in substantial purchases and short sales of shares of that stock, filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit challenging the orders on a variety of grounds. On October 15, 1975, the court dismissed as frivolous all respondent's claims, except his allegation that the 'tacking' of 10-day summary suspension orders for an indefinite period was an abuse of the agency's authority and a deprivation of due process." The Supreme Court agreed.
Sloan has written an extensive lexicon of Khowar, a language spoken in Chitral, Pakistan. Sloan had a minor role in a commercially-produced film, that later became a video game, Mahjong H?r?ki Classic. Sloan drove a taxicab in New York City for several years. He is now primarily a publisher of books and DVDs about chess, go and other subjects.
Sloan is a chess journalist and author. He has claimed that when he was playing for U.C. Berkeley in the late 1960s, he was for a time playing at master strength, but he was never officially rated as such in the United States. His current U.S.C.F. rating is 1900, which is his rating floor, under which he cannot fall, no matter how poorly he plays. He claims to have traveled to nearly 80 countries, primarily attending chess tournaments. He has erroneously claimed to have "won the World Championship of Chinese Chess in Beijing, China, in 1988." He is rated an FM (equivalent to FIDE Master) by the World Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) Association. Sloan has competed in tournaments in Thai (Makrook) and Japanese (Shogi) chess. Sloan is a longtime and frequent cross-poster to Usenet groups.
From 2002 to 2006, Sloan was active in the Libertarian Party of New York attempting to influence its policy agenda and candidate nominations. In an April 30, 2006, email to Michael Badnarik's 2004 Presidential campaign mailing list, an individual claiming to be Sloan announced his intention to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of New York State. In 2006 Sloan was elected as an officer to the Manhattan Libertarian Party County Committee as Director of Media Relations. He was not re-elected to that position in 2007. He was a delegate to the 2008 Libertarian National Convention and the 2010 Libertarian National Convention. On May 25, 2008 in Denver, Colorado, Sloan was nominated to the National Committee of the Libertarian Party and made a speech addressing the Libertarian National Convention.
In July 2006, Sloan was elected to the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation (USCF). He advocated a major expansion of scholastic chess, stating that the USCF should establish a program to certify school chess teachers. He criticized the USCF's recent move from New Windsor, New York to Crossville, Tennessee. As second-place finisher (out of five) in the special election, Sloan was elected to a one-year term on the board (the first-place finisher received a three-year term). Sloan's term of service began in August 2006. In 2007, Sloan ran for reelection to the USCF Executive Board, but was unsuccessful, finishing a distant ninth out of ten candidates. On October 2, 2007, Sloan filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking to overturn the results of the 2007 USCF, and alleging that more than 2,000 obscene "Fake Sam Sloan" newsgroup postings prior to the election had been made by a rival candidate, Paul Truong. On August 28, 2008, US District Judge Denny Chin dismissed the suit with prejudice pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), 12(b)(2) and 12(b)(6). Nevertheless, an investigation by the United States Secret Service has established that Sloan was impersonated by Polgar and Truong more than 2,500 times.
On 3 April 2008, posts appeared on USENET, apparently placed by Mr. Sloan, claiming that some of his websites had been closed down by law enforcement in Amherst County, Virginia, apparently because Sloan listed the home addresses of parties involved in his long-running but moot child custody dispute involving his daughter. The USENET posting mentions County investigator Christopher Smith. During that same time, Smith was conducting a broad campaign against Internet crime in the State.
Sloan renewed his bid for governor in the New York gubernatorial election, 2010, facing off against attorney Warren Redlich and former madam Kristin Davis. Sloan, by his own admission, is not popular within the Libertarian Party of New York and did not expect to win the nomination. He has testified that he only agreed to run for the post after Davis dropped out of contention for the line and a faction in the party who opposed Redlich's nomination needed another candidate. Sloan eventually lost the nomination to Redlich in a two-way battle, by a vote of 27 for Redlich and 17 for Sloan, after Davis refused to show up at the convention. Despite his failure to secure the nomination, Sloan was the first to submit petitions to the board of elections with the Libertarian Party line, which effectively gives him the nomination; the down-ballot selections on Sloan's petitions are identical to those confirmed by the party committee. However, because his petitions failed to contain anywhere near the requisite 15,000 signatures, the nomination will go to Redlich; it has been speculated that Sloan is using the ploy to file a lawsuit against Redlich in his long-running dispute with the state Libertarian Party.
Sloan has been married three times and has eight children by five women. Sloan's second wife, Honzagool, was a native of Chitral and together they had a daughter named Shamema born in New York State on October 15, 1981. Sloan and Honzagool soon separated and Sloan fled New York for Virginia with Shamema, soon leaving Shamema in the care of a Virginia couple, while Honzagool soon returned to Chitral. Sloan was soon locked into a now-moot child custody struggle with that Virginia couple over that same daughter which lasted many years. On September 5, 1991, Sloan attempted to flee the USA with Shamema and he was arrested. Sloan was convicted of attempted abduction of Shamema for which he spent 18 months in State prison.
Sloan has converted to Islam and thus he is also known as Haji Mohammed Ismail Sloan.
