The Farsons Chess Preliminaries, came to an end with Matthew Saliba, of Attard, emerging as the winner of the competition thanks to his superior Buholtz score after four players finished on five points each.

These are M.Saliba, Fabrizio Ellul, Sam Sacco and Clarence Psaila. The other two players who also qualified for the second phase of the National Chess Championship, called the ‘Candidates’, are Filipina Aguilera and Ayman Ibrahim.

The surprise of the competition was undoubtedly the second placed player Fabrizio Ellul who is an un-rated player. Ellul played solidly throughout the competition and deserved to qualify.

Ray Azzopardi, who last year managed to qualify from this competition, came close to repeat his last year’s performance however, at the end, he had to settle for seventh place together with Noel Grima. Grima had a good tournament and with a little luck could have made it to the next phase.

At the lower end of the table Rita Saliba, 11 years, managed two good wins against much higher rated players and although losing the other five games she showed a good understanding of opening theory in all her seven games.

Together with Filipina Aguilera, who placed fifth overall and qualified, Saliba is showing everyone that Chess is certainly not a game reserved for the male gender.