Once upon a time, Pavel Sladovnik used to be chessplayer. Having been a member of chessclub
Slavoj Vysehrad, he managed to reach 1st class. (1st class is high level, just only one step bellow national Candidate Master class, 1st class means strength in 1800 - 2100 Elo range.) New millenium brought new era, people lost their free time, many players played less and less and so did Sladovnik. Our nice game - chess - is addictive however and fortunately there is internet with many chess servers. Sladovnik went this way too and as many others he realized, that online chess is much closely related to correspondence than OTB.
Now, necessary intermezzo about correspondence chess. Correspondence chess was originally an alternative to normal chess for players who have their jobs or family obligations and thus they cannot travel long distances and be away for week or more. This worked and correspondence chess became popular among chessplayers. Correspondence chess has one serious disadvantage however: It is almost impossible to control what is an opponent doing. Some players want to win at any cost, especially in official events. In the ancient ages, "lost" postcards and backdated messages were quite common. New communication technologies have made classic correspondence chess obsolete. Postal chess organisations reflected these changes, allowed e-mail and finally accepted play on webservers. This erased these issues completely. Modern correspondence chess is played via electronic devices without such lag and increasing prize of postal stamps helped to overcome old habits. New era brought new problems however: third party. In the good old times, this problem already existed too, although it had been only minor issue. ICCF never adressed it in its rules. Players were free to consult their thoughts and analyse together. No big problem, because communications were slow, good players were rare and thus correspondence player rarely got permanent assistance. But new era brought except new communication systems also strong chess software and situation changed completely. Now for a few bucks, player gets a super-GM guide playing games for him. Opinions started to differ. Part of players demand ban of computers to maintain the original intent, arguing they want to play human opponents, because they can play computers without paying postal cards or internet connection. Second part promote "advanced" chess: "Let's use computers all of us, better player will still win." ICCF remained silent and correspondence events were soon flooded with computer abusers, usually totally unknown patzers. Some other correspondence chess organisations banned computers, however they were usually powerless against cheaters. Chess sites offering chess also soon had to choose: allow or ban computers. The first option means low attractivity for true chessplayers, the second means a lot of work with cheaters.
Pavel Sladovnik joined
Hogan, Czech amateur chess site, in the autumn of 2002. He realized quickly that top players are in fact computer-backed trash and he understood he can't beat them. Thus, he decided to join
The Dark Side himself. Hogan is an amateur site, it isn't moderated and has no written rules. Everyone is free to fool others with computer play and lie about it, create any number of puppet accounts as he wants to swindle his/her rating with fake games and use bad language in primitive forum, which is also there. In short: complete dunghill. Sladovnik put efforts together with his computer and soon things went better. Year by year, Sladovnik entered the "elite" and then he became the absolute ruler of Hogan server. Althouhg not necessarily bad person himself, he didn't realize the petty change: he stopped being chessplayer himself and became a robot operated by his own chess software abusing some minor Hogan's bugs (time management, stalemate) totally losing a clue about fair play.
Others Hogan players were envying him his success and soon many puppet accounts appeared pretending to be Sladovnik and spamming the forum with garbage talk. Unable to control it, Sladovnik searched for better chess site with moderated forums. Finally he found Chess.com. He created
an account and started to play. Knowing only Hogan, he didn't bother with some trivial rules, maybe he even didn't read them, and fired up his Fritz, Rybka or whatever. Unfortunately, Polar_Bear smelled him from affar. Three days after report, Sladovnik aka Worff was banned.
And what is he doing today? He "plays" chess at
Open Games. Is it him or is it Rybka? Lol.
Edit 11/07/11: Except Worff or Worf, he also uses nicknames Zpocenyveverky, OVranska26 and StarGate14.
