Seventeen-year-old Jack Mizzi set a new Malta chess record when he won all nine games in the Malta Blitz Chess Championship on September 17.
The Malta Blitz Championship is an annual tournament organised by the Malta Chess Federation (MCF).
Thirty-two players from different nationalities, including Germany, Turkey, Serbia, and China, participated in the tournament.
Blitz is a form of Fast Chess where the players have a limited amount of time to make their move.
Unlike traditional chess, where games are expected to last more than three hours, in Blitz, each player will have three minutes with two seconds increments and each game is expected to last less than 10 minutes.
Hence, Blitz Chess, tests the players on their ability to make decisions in a limited amount of time and is recognized by the International Chess Federation, FIDE and MCF.
It is very rare that Blitz championships are won with perfect scores.
In the international arena, this was recently achieved by Magnus Carlsen when he won all his 9 Blitz games. It is understood that this is the first time it happened in the Malta Chess scene.
Jack Mizzi has been playing chess since he was 10 years old.
This is not his first personal record. In 2022, at 16 years of age, Mizzi became Malta’s youngest-ever Candidate Master (CM).
He was also the youngest person to win the Malta preliminaries at the tender age of 13.
Mizzi also represents Malta in various international competitions and is best known for his 2022 performance in the Small Nations Games where he obtained wins against IM (International Master) Berend Fred (ELO 2300) from Luxembourg and FM (Fide Master) Michaelides Konstantinos (ELO 2304) from Cyprus.
Jack Mizzi is also the junior champion of Malta (2022,2023), the Malta Rapid champion (2022) and the Malta Blitz champion (2022,2023).
