The Maltese Chess Championship is the yearly chess championship organised by the Malta Chess Federation in Malta which determines the national champion. Initially it consisted of an Open Championship.
Now the National championships also include the Junior Championships, the Rapid Championships and the Blitz Championships.
The current open National Champion is David Cilia Vincenti. Jack Mizzi holds the other 3 National titles: National Junior Champion, National Rapid Champion and National Blitz Champion.
Malta Open Championships
The first recorded open championship was held in 1923 and was won by Oscar Serracino-Inglott. Harry Camilleri won the championship a record eighteen times, first in 1965 and last in 2005, at the age of 72.
The current Malta Open Chess Champion is David Cilia Vincenti.
Candidates phase
To qualify for the Final phase of the Open Championship a player needs to have either placed first or second in the previous year or have placed in the top N of the Candidates phase of that year. N is determined by the number of participants.[1]
Preliminaries Phase
To qualify for the Candidates, a player must have reached an established Elo rating, currently 1700, or have placed in the top N of the Preliminaries.[1] The youngest player to have won the Preliminaries in Malta is Jack Mizzi.[2]
Since 2017, the Malta Chess Federation started organising the Malta National Blitz Championship.
In 2021, an online Blitz Gran Prix was held and this was won by Jack Mizzi.[4] The 2022 and 2023 Malta Blitz champion was Jack Mizzi.[6][5] Jack Mizzi set a new Malta Chess record when he won the 2023 Blitz championship with a perfect 9-0 score.[8]