The Las Vegas Masters was held from June 10-14, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The tournament was hugely successful and achieved it’s goal of providing a lot of players the chance to score GM and IM norms, while also providing an exciting and challenging tournament.

Two IM norms were achieved at the tournament. FM John Bartholomew scored half-point more than he needed to secure his third and final IM norm while FM Robert Hess did enough to obtain his 2nd IM norm. Congratulations to both of these players!

IM Thomas Roussel-Roozmon was extremely close to obtaining a GM norm but went into the last round needing a win against whoever he was paired against. Unluckily for him he got the #1 seed in the tournament, GM Leonid Kritz, and tried pushing too hard and eventually lost the game.

All in all I believe the players enjoyed themselves at this, the first ever Las Vegas Masters. I would just like to say a big thank you to every one of them for their participation, to Carol Jarecki and Charles Hatherill for their TD services, to Chad Gauvin and the Schoolhouse Chess Center for being gracious hosts, and to Zeljka and MonRoi for providing their wonderful score keeping system that allowed us to bring live coverage of every game as it happened!

Please select from one of the following links to obtain more information about the Las Vegas Masters 2006: