The Republic of Malta is a speck of a nation eighty kilometers south of Sicily, an archipelago of a few islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The total area is 122 square miles or 300 sqare km, the population of around 450,000, which makes it one of the world's smallest and most densely populated countries. The capital Valletta is less than a single square km in area, making it the smallest national capital in the European Union. the official languages are Maltese, a semitic language decended from Arabic, and English.
Taste of Malta – which is surrounded by the Mediterranean
As we mentioned several months ago, Malta is becoming ever more active in organizing chess events. In January the Maltese hosted several round robins, including this one.
At the end of May this there was the first edition of a modest but very nice Open
directed by Clarence Psaila and sponsored by the online casino Lucky Dino.
The event was played in the Imperial Hotel in Sliema, a beach town that is a short bus ride
from the capital Valetta, and half an hour way from the country’s only airport in Luqa.
The lineup was not very strong, but the event was truly international. In two tournament groups (Open A for the players of Elo 1850+ and Open B for those under 1850) over twenty national federations were represented, including such distant ones as South Korean, New Zealand, Israeli and the Palestinian CF. Obviously, there were also many Europeans and not surprisingly a great deal of them were Maltese.
It is also a tradition that chess events on the archipelago attract a significant number of Britons, and the Lucky Dino was no exception. The UK contingent included, among others, a well-known journalist Dominic Lawson (Elo 1980), who used to be the chief editor of the Spectator weekly and now hosts a chess program, Across the Board, in the BBC. Besides, quite recently, Lawson became the President of the English Chess Federation – see this interesting pre-election interview with Frederic Friedel. In the Lucky Dino he scored four out of nine (including a point for two “byes”) that gave him a respectable 2007 rating performance.
Dominic Lawson (with glasses) having white pieces against his compatriot Paul Bielby
The heavy favorite for the first place in the group A was a Swedish IM Roland Ekstroem (2395) who has been living in Malta for years and is very active in the local chess circuit. Indeed, he won the competition, but quite unexpectedly faced very strong opposition from a Polish CM Piotr Tworzydlo (2116). The two players drew their game in round five and both scored 7.5/9 (in the case of IM Ekstroem it included half a point for a bye he took in the fourth round). Therefore, the winner was declared based on tiebreak points and it was the much more experienced IM that took first prize.
Roland Ekstroem proved you can win a tournament in spite of being the best in the pack.
Here is the game he won in the third round. Please pay attention to his frank, entertaining and instructive notes. Recently Roland has developped a liking for watching "banter blitz". It is a kind of game where players talk aloud what they are thinking during their play. In the following he comments his game in a similar fashon, here and there telling us what he thought during the game. These comments are marked "1", whereas those made after consulting databases and Rybka are marked "2".
Some Polish names are really hard to read and pronounce for other nations and this is the case of Piotr Tworzydlo, who took second place. That is why the tournament referee Adam Raoof felt a bit helpless during the closing ceremony, when he had to announce the Pole’s success. Then he spotted your reporter (another Pole) and was much relieved once he could transfer the privilege of making the announcement to me.
I took it with pleasure and now I am going to repeat what I said to the crowd in the playing hall: "the second prize winner, who incidentally beat me in the last round, was
piɒtr tvɒˈʒɪdwɒ.
Helpful?
Apart from playing a good tournament, Piotr made a several days trip to Gozo, the second biggest island of the Maltese archipelago. As a result you can enjoy his photos in this article (whenever you see the Maltese landscape or a piece of Mediterranean architecture, the photo comes from him).
The third prize went to Tiberiu-Petre Stanciu from Romania (2069) who scored 6 out of 9. Apart from showing a good performance, Tiberu-Petre was one of the most colorful players of the event. Before each game he demanded somebody should make him a joint photo with the opponent and it was clear he was playing for fun, not for the result. Actually, these were the words he used after beating Israeli Yuval Helving (2093): “I am playing for fun”. Though Yuval was not happy about the outcome, he could not help but laugh when relating their postgame conversation.
Tiberiu-Petre Stanciu (right) and Yuval Helving
The strongest Maltese player of the main tournament was CM Duncan Vella (2052), who scored 4.5 out of nine and finished in the middle of the 25-player group. Group B was much more populous as it gathered 44 players. Just like in the main tournament there were two winners – the Englishmen Phillip K. Gardner (1793) and Ali Niall (1593) – who scored 7.5/9.
The third prize in Group B went to Maltese Mario Psaila (1841).
By the way, he has no family connections with the tournament director Clarence Psaila;
it just happens that both of them hold a surname that is one of the most common in Malta.
Malta is proud of its beautiful churches (photo from the north of the Island of Gozo)
View from the fortress of Rabat (the capital of Gozo)
Once the tournament is finished, let’s go to the countryside
One of the innumerable Maltese bays
Photos by Piotr Tworzydlo, Karl Heinz Neubauer and Filipina Thornton
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Piotr Kaim (born 1973) is a Polish national master playing for the YMCA Warszawa (Warsaw) Club. Besides he is a freelance journalist who has contributed to numerous periodicals, magazines, newspapers and Internet sites. His articles concerned wide range of topics related, among others, to politics, chess and taxes.
Piotr is a certified tax advisor and had a 12 year career with PricewaterhouseCoopers Poland tax advisory services. He also submitted the most unusual photo of himself for publication. |
