The 34th Annual North American Chess Open was played from 26-30 December in Horseshoe Casino Resort, Las Vegas. The event featured eight different competitions with a prize fund of $130,000.
More than 100 players competed in the main Open section which featured the top prize of $10,000. GM Brian Escalante (Peru, 2478) emerged as the sole Winner of the event with the score of 7/9 points. After losing first two rounds, Brian Escalante had an incredible comeback and won seven consecutive rounds to clinch the tournament and the top prize of $10,300!
As many as eight players tied for second, scoring 6.5 points each and shared a total of $14,400 in eight equal parts.
Featured photo by Daniel Schipper & Charlotte Chess Center.
Final standings – 34th Annual North American Chess Open:
| Rk | Name | Rtg | Fed | Pts |
| 1 | GM Brian Escalante | 2478 | PER | 7 |
| 2 | GM Lazaro Bruzon Batista | 2580 | USA | 6.5 |
| 3 | GM John Michael Burke | 2573 | USA | 6.5 |
| 4 | GM Jianchao Zhou | 2572 | USA | 6.5 |
| 5 | GM Titas Stremavicius | 2567 | LTU | 6.5 |
| 6 | IM Justin Wang | 2527 | USA | 6.5 |
| 7 | GM Cemil Can Ali Marandi | 2513 | TUR | 6.5 |
| 8 | GM Arman Mikaelyan | 2507 | ARM | 6.5 |
| 9 | IM Samrug Narayanan | 2413 | USA | 6.5 |
| 10 | IM Lokumannage Susal Thew De Silva | 2367 | SRI | 6.5 |
| 11 | GM Yasser Quesada Perez | 2577 | CUB | 6 |
| 12 | GM Yan Liu | 2548 | CHN | 6 |
| 13 | IM Mark Heimann | 2459 | USA | 6 |
| 14 | FM Tugstumur Yesuntumur | 2378 | MGL | 6 |
| 15 | FM Bryan Xie | 2311 | USA | 6 |
| 16 | FM Rose Atwell | 2169 | USA | 6 |
| 17 | GM Emilio Cordova Daza | 2531 | PER | 5.5 |
| 18 | GM Jose Gabriel Cardoso Cardoso | 2516 | COL | 5.5 |
| 19 | GM Tong(qd) Xiao | 2502 | CHN | 5.5 |
| 20 | GM Artem Omelja | 2419 | UKR | 5.5 |
| 21 | IM Joseph Levine | 2391 | USA | 5.5 |
| 22 | GM Richard Balansag Bitoon | 2374 | PHI | 5.5 |
| 23 | GM Petro Golubka | 2341 | UKR | 5.5 |
| 24 | IM Eric Chang Liu | 2322 | USA | 5.5 |
| 25 | FM Megan Lee | 2294 | USA | 5.5 |
| 26 | FM Mikayel Rostomyan | 2277 | ARM | 5.5 |
| 27 | GM Batchuluun Tsegmed | 2458 | MGL | 5 |
| 28 | FM Chinguun Sumiya | 2438 | MGL | 5 |
| 29 | IM Vyom Vidyarthi | 2434 | USA | 5 |
| 30 | IM Adam Frank | 2383 | CZE | 5 |
| 31 | FM Bryan Enming Lin | 2359 | USA | 5 |
| 32 | GM Dmitry Gurevich | 2352 | USA | 5 |
| 33 | IM Tianqi Wang | 2339 | USA | 5 |
| 34 | FM Isaac Wang | 2335 | USA | 5 |
| 35 | IM Michael Lee | 2321 | USA | 5 |
| 36 | Eduard Hakobyan | 2321 | USA | 5 |
| 37 | FM Shaashwath Sivakumar | 2293 | USA | 5 |
| 38 | CM Jorge Nunez Asencio | 2284 | CUB | 5 |
| 39 | FM Aryan Gutla | 2271 | USA | 5 |
| 40 | FM Ryan Amburgy | 2239 | USA | 5 |
| 41 | FM Patrick Peijun Liu | 2206 | USA | 5 |
| 42 | CM Rafael Adam | 2176 | CAN | 5 |
| 43 | Vishva Nanugonda | 2147 | USA | 5 |
| 44 | Elbert Fang | 2145 | USA | 5 |
| 45 | Andrew Jiang | 2121 | USA | 5 |
| 46 | Matthew Wilber | 2109 | USA | 5 |
| 47 | IM Diego Flores Quillas | 2431 | PER | 4.5 |
| 48 | FM Ethan Song | 2315 | CAN | 4.5 |
| 49 | Sullivan Mac Mcconnell | 2240 | USA | 4.5 |
| 50 | FM Andrew Guo | 2236 | USA | 4.5 |
| 51 | Ruoyu Zhou | 2229 | USA | 4.5 |
| 52 | FM Ching Wei Austin Yang | 2157 | TPE | 4.5 |
| 53 | FM Nathan Yan | 2155 | USA | 4.5 |
| 54 | CM Rohan Rajaram | 2139 | USA | 4.5 |
| 55 | Jayden H Lee | 2129 | USA | 4.5 |
| 56 | Naveen Prabhu | 2121 | USA | 4.5 |
| 57 | Alex Zhao | 2107 | USA | 4.5 |
| 58 | Siddharth Singh | 2104 | USA | 4.5 |
| 59 | Austin Liu | 2091 | USA | 4.5 |
| 60 | IM Evan Park | 2375 | USA | 4 |
| 61 | FM Sungho Yim | 2309 | KOR | 4 |
| 62 | FM Zoey Tang | 2306 | USA | 4 |
| 63 | IM Mark Ginsburg | 2273 | USA | 4 |
| 64 | Evan Zihao Ai | 2202 | USA | 4 |
| 65 | Advaith Vijayakumar | 2149 | USA | 4 |
| 66 | CM Ryan Yang | 2139 | CAN | 4 |
| 67 | James L Nguyen | 2128 | USA | 4 |
| 68 | IM Eshaan Hebbar | 2121 | USA | 4 |
| 69 | Roger V V Shi | 2101 | USA | 4 |
| 70 | Vidip Kumar Kona | 2084 | USA | 4 |
| 71 | Luke Widjaja | 2049 | USA | 4 |
| 72 | Alexander Zhu | 1992 | USA | 4 |
| 73 | Lev Shangin | 1991 | USA | 4 |
| 74 | WIM Chloe Gaw | 1985 | USA | 4 |
| 75 | IM Bernardo Roselli Mailhe | 2342 | URU | 3.5 |
| 76 | FM Isaac Garcia | 2310 | MEX | 3.5 |
| 77 | CM Chikwere Godwin Onyekwere | 2201 | NGR | 3.5 |
| 78 | WIM Omya Vidyarthi | 2183 | USA | 3.5 |
| 79 | FM Pedram Atoufi | 2162 | IRI | 3.5 |
| 80 | Kaustubh Kodihalli | 2162 | USA | 3.5 |
| 81 | Anshul P Shetty | 2110 | USA | 3.5 |
| 82 | CM Yiding Lu | 2110 | USA | 3.5 |
| 83 | Nathan Ping-ying Wu | 2089 | CAN | 3.5 |
| 84 | Yu-Cheng Liang | 2054 | USA | 3.5 |
| 85 | Sepehr Golsefidy | 2040 | USA | 3.5 |
| 86 | Kritin Rohan Gopalakrishnan | 2006 | USA | 3.5 |
| 87 | Nehanraj Ramesh | 1879 | USA | 3.5 |
| 88 | Isaac Vega | 1751 | USA | 3.5 |
| 89 | IM Alexander Ross Katz | 2405 | USA | 3 |
| 90 | FM Avi Harrison Kaplan | 2317 | USA | 3 |
| 91 | FM Oleksandr Shymanshyi | 2266 | UKR | 3 |
| 92 | IM Vitaly Bachin | 2251 | RUS | 3 |
| 93 | Mr. Tommy Kozlek | 1685 | USA | 3 |
| 94 | GM Pavel Blatny | 2315 | CZE | 2.5 |
| 95 | FM Henry Deng | 2308 | USA | 2.5 |
| 96 | Gnel Melikian | 2239 | RUS | 2.5 |
| 97 | FM Robby Adamson | 2225 | USA | 2.5 |
| 98 | Rishabh Chinni | 2204 | USA | 2.5 |
| 99 | Thomas Kung | 2173 | USA | 2.5 |
| 100 | CM Joel Paul Ganta | 2149 | IND | 2.5 |
| 101 | Xuli Dai | 2059 | USA | 2.5 |
| 102 | Vispy Pardiwalla | 2013 | IND | 2.5 |
| 103 | Daniel Rajkumar | 1760 | TTO | 2.5 |
| 104 | IM Alexander Velikanov | 2388 | USA | 2 |
| 105 | FM Stephen Willy | 2333 | USA | 2 |
| 106 | FM Shaaketh Sivakumar | 2306 | USA | 2 |
| 107 | Luca Chang | 1883 | USA | 2 |
| 108 | WCM Avery Yu | 1964 | USA | 1.5 |
| 109 | Xiaodong Jin | 1756 | USA | 1.5 |
| 110 | GM Prithu Gupta | 2412 | IND | 1 |
| 111 | Vaibhav Robinjith Kalpaka | 2159 | IND | 1 |
| 112 | Pearson Hong | 2081 | USA | 1 |
| 113 | Rishabh Chandrashekh Ar Gokhale | 2163 | IND | 0.5 |