Top seed Ayman Ibrahim (photo) is currently leading the table with three wins out of three in the Malta Chess Federation Preliminaries 2007, the first phase of the National Chess Championship for this year.

Ibrahim won his third round clash with Matthew Saliba in an interesting variation of the French defence where black’s Kingside initiative was a little too ambitious.

With correct play in the centre Ibrahim managed to take total control of the game and soon turned his positional advantage into a full point.

On board two Clarence Psaila had the better of Alexander Farrugia in a

Sicilian 2.c3 where white blundered a pawn early in the game. After

exchanging Queens and Rooks Farrugia hoped to clinge a draw by trading his knight to two pawns however in the end-game of Knight and three pawns versus Psaila’s six pawns he failed to find the correct moves to take home a draw and had to resign.

On the other boards, Chris Farrugia had the better of youngster Kyle Bonnici who although losing is showing very good progress, veteran Ron Sammut defeated Rita Saliba, Jesseica Aguilar won her game agaisnt newcomer Joe Gatt while Noel Grima won his encounter with Michael Cuschieri.

This year the Preliminaries, not unlike other years, is very closely contested with almost all players still with a chance to make it with the top six to qualify for the next phase of the National Championship to be held in July this year.

These are the results for round three: Ayman Ibrahim vs Matthew Saliba 1-0; Alexander Farrugia vs Clarence Psaila 0-1; Noel Grima vs Michael Cuschieri 1-0; Kyle Bonnici vs Christopher Farrugia 0-1; Fabrizio Ellul vs Tony Muscat Baron – draw; Joe Gatt vs Jessica Aguilar 0-1; Rita Saliba vs Ron Sammut 0-1; J.Cassar – bye.