Troff, Yang & Abrahamyan Earn New Titles
April 2, 2014
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It's a great season for young American title seekers. Brian Jerauld's new Chess Life Magazine cover story detailed four of our newest GMs (read his piece online here), while more young Americans continue to earn GM stripes. 

Kayden Troff of Utah earned his third GM norm at the University of Texas at Dallas Spring Invitational.

Here is one of his victories over GM Conrad Holt. 

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Kayden's title was approved conditionally on acheving the 2500 FIDE rating at the recent FIDE Presidential Board meeting in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. Franc Guadalupe, FIDE Zonal president and Chief arbiter at the Spring Invitational told CLO it was great to see this, "outstanding young man get a well-deserved title approved." See Kayden's CLO piece on his second norm here, and follow his progress on twitter and facebook. 

Darwin Yang of Texas was also approved for the title conditional upon rating. He earned his final norm at the Bay Area International in January (see GM Josh Friedel's tournament report here.

Another young Texan, Jeffrey Xiong had his IM title approved conditionally last year, and had a strong performance in the DCC Fide Open, finishing in first place with a perfect 5-0 score, including wins over Yang and GM Ioan Chirila. This puts him over the 2400 mark required to be an official IM. 

Tatev300iceland.jpgTatev Abrahamyan was also awarded her International Master conditionally on rating. She recently had a stellar result at the Reykjavik Open in Iceland picking up 20 points, so is well on her way to the official title. 

In some final good news for American titles, Guadalupe informed CLO that the International Arbiter request was granted for Thomas Langland while Korey Kormick and Oscar Garcia earned FIDE Arbiter titles. 

Congratulations to all of our new title earners!