Emory Tate, Bryan Smith and Salvijus Bercys

At the first FIDE congress of the year (January 27-28, Antalya, Turkey) Bryan Smith, Emory Tate and Salvijus Bercys received their International Master titles. Frank Berry and Jon Haskel earned International Organizer titles. Frank Berry is the organizer of the Oklahoma North American FIDE Open (Feb.17-19), which has a unique and controversial women's prize fund.

Attacking legend Emory Tate and high-school whiz Salvijus Bercys both won their final norms at the 2006 World Open. Here is Bercys' last round World Open win:

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Emory Tate games from the 2006 World Open are unavailable right now (Send them to me if you have them!), but how could anyone get enough of the following classic Tate victory?

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"I'm really happy to get the title," said Bryan Smith who has been over 2400 for four years, but found it hard to earn the norms, especially in America, where norm opportunities are scarce. A nice bonus to winning the IM title for Bryan is expressing more easily his accomplishments to non chess players: "It takes five minutes to explain to a non chessplayer what a FIDE master is-International Master makes sense immediately." Bryan won his final norm in Hungary at the Tenkes Kupa Open, where he defeated GM Zoltan Varga:

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Congratulations to all our title winners! According to Jesse Kraai and Greg Shahade, this may be the beginning of something big.