Online Rapid April tournament

As in March, Robert Novak won the April Online Rapid tournament and Jack Mizzi ended runner-up.
16 players participated and surprise results happened as early as round 1. Marco Gaffarena beat Filipina Thornton who blundered a knight. Following this Marco trapped Filipina’s queen. The other surprise was Luc Fiorini’s (a welcome newcomer) win against Jacob Zammit.
Round 2 saw results go pretty much as expected. Young Hayley Thornton had a good win against Neil Spiteri.
Hayley repeated her good win with another good result in round 3 by drawing against Jacob Zammit. The game ended with a Q+K vs Q+R endgame and Jacob played a very good rook sacrifice to force a stalemate.
Round 4 saw the battle of the titas with Robert Novak playing Jack Mizzi. It was a very balanced and high level game which ended in a Q+B+5 pawns against Q+N+5 pawns. Novak had the bishop and showed why bishops and stronger than knight when pawns are on either side. In time trouble Jack lost 2 pawns and although he tried to hold on, he could not keep white from queening one of his pawns. On 2nd board, Tonio Zarb won a very good game against Onur Can Pala.
In round 5, both Robert Novak and Jack Mizzi won their games against Filipina Thornton and Matteo Stagno respectively. On 2nd board, Christian Schembri registered a good win against Tonio Zarb after Tonio blundered his queen.
In the final 6th round, Robert Novak secured victory by beating Christian Schembri. Tonio Zarb and Jack Mizzi played a good game on board 2 with Jack taking the win. Milena Stagno wrapped up a good tournament by beating Claude Licari and thus secured joint 3rd place.

Jack Mizzi is now 8 points ahead over Robert Novak in the overall Grand Prix standings. He just needs to collect 4 points (4th place) in the last online rapid in May.