In July 2009, Najer won the strong rapid round-robin tournament, whose field included Boris Gelfand and Judit Polgar among others, of the Richard Riordan Chess FestivalThe Richard Riordan Chess Festival was sponsored by the former mayor of Los Angeles and included various tournaments for players of different levels: Chessdom article at the 2009 Maccabiah Games. Soon afterwards, in the same month, he tied for first with Robert Fontaine in the Paleochora Open Tournament. In 2010, he tied for 2nd–5th with Michael Adams, Victor Mikhalevski and Jiří Štoček the 14th Chicago Open.
