14-year old and top seed Matthew Portelli won the Candidates tournament for the second consecutive time. The Candidates – considered to be the most challenging tournament of the year, sees Malta’s top players trying to take the top 4 places to enable them to qualify for the Championship Finals.
It was a very closely contested tournament. With 5 ex-Malta Champions taking part, the most experienced player Colin Pace took 2nd place while Robert Zerafa took 3rd place. Colin secured the draw he needed in the last round against David Cilia Vincenti while Robert beat Matthew. The top 3 all ended on 5 points with only Bucholz tie-break separating them (Portelli 22; Pace 20; Zerafa 16.5).
The last qualifying place was taken by Adam Buckle on 4.5pts. Adam qualified through the Preliminaries (4th place) and achieved an outstanding achievement of qualifying to the Finals- surpassing many other higher rated players in the process. Adam’s first round win against Jake Darmanin proved to be the tie-break that gave him 4th place. Jake also ended on 4.5pts. Adam drew against Matthew, beat Patrick Zerafa and beat Matthias Gatt.
It was heart-breaking for Matthias in the final round. While cruising towards a win in a winning position, he went for a checkmate rather than winning a second piece. However, he overlooked that the bishop was defending an important pawn. After Bxh3, Adam delivered mate by Qxf7.
On 4pts. David, Matthias, Sam Sacco and young Keshav Reyansh took 6th-9th place.
With respect to international rating, Keshav gained an impressive 63 rating points, Adam gained 61pts, Gabriel Gauci gained 59pts. Yunlong Wang, who will represent Malta in the forthcoming Women’s Olympiad gained 33 rating pts and achieve 3pts.
Robert Novak and Noel Grima were the arbiters.
Full details on https://s1.chess-results.com/tnr1452680.aspx
Final Classification:
1-3: Portelli, Pace, Zerafa R. 5pts
4-5: Buckle, Darmanin 4.5pts
6-9: Cilia Vincenti, Gatt, Sacco, Reyansh 4pts
10-11: Zammit B., Zerafa P. 3.5pts
12-16: Gauci, Wang, Refalo J., Pala, Zammit J. 3pts
17: Dobbin 2.5pts
18-20: Thornton F., Saliba, Refalo I. 2pts
21: Thornton H. 1.5pts
