After four rounds, Matthew Saliba and John Richards are the sole leaders with four points in the Preliminary phase of the Maltco National Championship.

In the fourth round, Saliba and Richards beat Raymond Chircop and Alfred Demanuele respectively. The leading duo will play each other in the next round.

Five players follow just one point behind as the battle for the top ten places and a place in the Candidates tournament starts to gather momentum.

Games are well fought and some encounters are taking over four hours to finish – even though the time limit was quickened for this competition.

Surprises continued to occur with unrated players obtaining positive results against internationally-rated opponents.

Jeremy Vella, 11, played a great game against Lawrence Ancilleri to achieve a well-earned draw in a difficult endgame while Jaden Borg, 12, managed to beat the more-quoted David Gauci.

Alexa Cosmin, who recently won the Interschools tournament, is leading the junior players in ninth place with 2.5 points.

Classification
4 pts: Saliba, Richards.
3 pts: Demanuele, Herd, Refalo, Farrugia, Chircop.
2.5 pts: J. Gatt, Alexa, Klotz, R. Azzopardi, Muscat, S. Gatt.
2 pts: Psaila, Licari, Hawk, Grech, Conti, Sammut.
1.5 pts: Cuschieri, A. Azzopardi, Ancilleri, J. Vella.
1 pt: G. Vella, Borg, Cassar, Gauci, Caruana, Galea, Falzon.