Holt Wins the U.S. Open
Six players finished the 9th and final round of the U.S. Open with 7.5 points: Conrad Holt, Michael Mulyar, Giorgi Margvelashvili, Fidel Corrales Jimenez, Ilya Nyzhnyk, and Alexander Shabalov. The first two had the best tiebreak scores and had a playoff game, and as Holt won he is the U.S. Open champ for 2014.
There was a big tie for 7th-15th place with 7 points apiece, and James Tarjan was one of the players in that tie; not bad for a 62-year-old who has taken 30 years off! The tournament was a bit too short to really separate the elite players from the rest though, and Tarjan's result can be broken down into two unequal parts: the U2300 part and the GM part. He was very efficient against the first group, scoring 6.5/7, but while he drew against Nyzhnyk he lost to Dmitry Gurevich. All the same it wasn't a bad result, and if he can do this on his first try it could be interesting to see what kind of form he can reach once he's back in the swing of things.