Jack Mizzi wins Junior Chess Championship

This year’s Junior Championships were held as two tournaments – the Under 12s and the U13-U20 groups.

 
17-year-old Jack Mizzi won the National Chess Junior Championship for the third time in a row with 6.5 points.
Mizzi won his last two games against Matthew Portelli and Gabriel Gauci to secure the title. Mizzi will now be eligible to represent Malta in World Junior U20 Championship 2024 in India.

The fight for second place was among Jacob Zammit (4 pts), Isaac Grima Bongailas(5pts) and Andrei Dobbin(4.5pts). The game between Grima Bongailas and Zammit ended with black’s victory. Meanwhile Dobbin won against Sacco, and thus secured second place on 5.5pts. Zammit (5pts) got the third place due to the direct encounter of his last game against Grima Bongailas (5pts) who is the Malta’s Under 14 champion.

Matthew Portelli received the trophy for U14 Runner up with 4.5 points. Gabriel Gauci (4 pts) secured third place in the U14 category due to beating Dante Pace and Andre Gauci who had same number of points.

Women’s Champion Milena Stagno is the girl’s junior champion. It was a close call as 13-year-old Hayley Thornton ended just half point behind on 3.5pts.

In the Under 12s group,  John Refalo and Yunlong Wang both ended with 6.5 pts and they drew against each other. Both of them were eagerly awaiting the final result.

John Refalo was declared U12 Champion due to a better tie-break score of 22 vs 21. Yunlong got the U12 Girls Champion Title. Samuel Spiteri collected 5 points and won the third place.

The youngest group U10 winner Elena Borg Mercieca collected 4 points and took 4th place in overall!

Matthew Aquilina with better tiebreak got the second place till Alexander Falzon was third, both collected 3.5 points.

Results can be found here:

https://chess-results.com/tnr902716.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=7
https://chess-results.com/tnr899599.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=7