Colin Pace is the new Chess Champion of the Maltese Islands. Pace won the 71st Chess Championship finals that were held at the Visitor’s Lounge of Simonds Farsons Cisk in Mriehel who were the kind sponsors of the entire championship cycle which included the Preliminaries and the Candidates competitions held earlier this year.

Colin Pace, 27 years old, is from Zejtun and lives in Birkirkara. He graduated in Information Technology at the University of Malta in 2001. This was the second title for Pace having been Champion of Malta for the first time in 2003.

This year was particularly important for Colin Pace. Beside playing in all the competitions held locally he also found the time to play in a relatively strong international competition in Tunisia.

This competition was in preparation for the Olympiad in Torino and served him very well since with the good results he obtained at the Olympiad he was awarded the title of Candidate Master by the international chess federation [FIDE]. Pace played on board two for the national squad scoring a respectable 6/10 with a performance rating of 2137.

Pace started his career at St.Paul’s Missionary College where he soon established himself as a strong player. Later on he started to participate in the Malta Chess Federation competitions and beside some minor successes he managed to win the Junior U/20 Championship title on two occasions. His current chess rating is 2171.

Although relatively young Pace has participated in the international chess Olympiad five times, namely at: Yerevan in Armenia [1996], Elista in the Russian republic of Kalmykia [1998], in Bled, Slovenia [2002], in Calvia, Spain [2004] and this year in Torino, Italy.