From memories of my CC play in the late 1990s, I believe he got the hammer dropped on him for persistently harassing opponents during his games; my recollection could be wrong, though.

It serves him right if that is the reason he was banned!

Some people will send you their bios and try to initiate some type of pen pal quality to their letters.

His opponent wrote back a move with "I reject your conditional" so Steve's time would start on the game. Steve knowing it was forced mate (He is a correspondence IM and an OTB National Master). Instead of making a move wrote back, you can't reject a conditional. (My comment: this is correct, on any correspondence site that allows conditionals if you fall into the conditional it IS made automatically... however back then it wasn't the internet so it would not be 'automatic.)' Steve if you know him is one of those guys that HAS to be right. So rather than make a move and play the game out to mate he insisted he had already indeed made a move with his conditional that his opponent could not reject. Steve being a rather unlikable personality however really just left it open for the powers that be to step in and hammer him for no reason over this. So when Steve never made his move -- he flagged! Of course Steve contested this citing his conditional as his move all the way to mate. The case went up and the decision was to ban Steve for his behavior.

At any rate, I wonder how such a ban would be enforced now in the internet age? I doubt FICGS or LSS would honor such a ban. Would ICCF if indeed even they could find out the story? So in fact, he might just be banned from the USCF. But the point remains, Steve does not own a computer and never has. He probably never will. So Steve even getting online to one of these corr sites is out of the question anyways to find out. And his lack of knowledge in using engines and software... he'd be unable to compete anyways.

My recollection was that ICCF banned him, not USCF. I read about it in Dunne's column in Chess Life some years ago. Dunne wrote (again, to the best of my recollection) something to the effect that ICCF had banned Tennant for life for "extreme contentiousness" (whatever that means).

He was rated 20XX as I recall which seemed 'way up there' to me, the time. I was black in a closed Lopez, Chigorin. I must have lost else I would have remembered beated such a strong player. HaHa.

1.e4 e5 2.Cf3 Cc6 3.Ab5 Cf6 4.0-0 Cxe4 5.d4 a6 6.Axc6 dxc6 7.De2 Af5 8.g4 Axg4 9.Dxe4 Axf3 10.Dxf3 Dxd4 11.Cc3 Dd7 12.Ae3 Ad6 13.Tad1 Td8 14.Ce4 0-0 15.Cf6+ gxf6 16.Ah6 e4 17.Dg2+ 1-0

If I were a dentist, I'd practice in Flossmoor.

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