Almasi wins Hungarian Championship
25 September 2008 9:35 AM CET | Last modified: 9:39 | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
The best of the rest - it’s a title that’s actually worth something in a strong chess country like Hungary. Without Peter Leko and Judit Polgar playing, Zoltan Almasi won the Hungarian Championship.
At the moment Hungary is the 6th country in the world in FIDE’s country rank by average rating of top 10 players. The current Hungarian top 20 looks like this:
Hungarian Top 20 July 2008
| Place | Name | Rating | B-Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leko, Peter | 2741 | 1979 |
| 2 | Polgar, Judit | 2711 | 1976 |
| 3 | Almasi, Zoltan | 2668 | 1976 |
| 4 | Berkes, Ferenc | 2645 | 1985 |
| 5 | Balogh, Csaba | 2624 | 1987 |
| 6 | Chernin, Alexander | 2593 | 1960 |
| 7 | Gyimesi, Zoltan | 2586 | 1977 |
| 8 | Ribli, Zoltan | 2577 | 1951 |
| 9 | Erdos, Viktor | 2576 | 1987 |
| 10 | Ruck, Robert | 2574 | 1977 |
| 11 | Medvegy, Zoltan | 2556 | 1979 |
| 12 | Groszpeter, Attila | 2554 | 1960 |
| 13 | Horvath, Jozsef | 2551 | 1964 |
| 14 | Acs, Peter | 2544 | 1981 |
| 15 | Horvath, Csaba | 2537 | 1968 |
| 16 | Pinter, Jozsef | 2536 | 1953 |
| 17 | Hera, Imre Jr. | 2518 | 1986 |
| 18 | Horvath, Adam | 2513 | 1981 |
| 18 | Portisch, Lajos | 2513 | 1937 |
| 20 | Szabo, Krisztian | 2510 | 1989 |
The 58th Hungarian Championship was a 16-player knockout tournament held in Nyiregyhaza (220 km east from Budapest) from 12 to 23 September 2008. If I counted correctly, eight of the first twenty players didn’t participate, including Hungary’s number four Ferenc Berkes and big names such as Chernin (currently full-time coach of Fabiano Caruana), Ribli, Acs and Portisch.
Still, the national championship of Hungary wasn’t a weak event. In the end it was Elo favorite Zoltan Almasi who won the final against third seeded Csaba Balogh. Robert Ruck won the fight for third place against Gabor Kovacs.
Hungarian Championship 2008
| Almasi, Z | ||||
| Almasi, Z | ||||
| Papp, G | ||||
| ½, 1 | Almasi, Z | |||
| Medvegy,Z | ½, ½, 1, ½ | |||
| Cao, S| | ||||
| Cao, S | ||||
| ½, 1 | Almasi, Z | |||
| Erdos,V | 1, ½ | |||
| Gonda, L | ||||
| Gonda,L | ||||
| ½, ½, ½, ½ | Ruck, R | |||
| Ruck,R | ½, ½, 1, ½ | |||
| Ruck, R | ||||
| Szabo,K | ||||
| ½, ½, 1, 1 | Almasi, Z | |||
| Balogh,C | ½, ½, 1, ½ | |||
| Balogh,C | ||||
| Czebe,A | ||||
| ½, ½, ½, ½ | Balogh,C | |||
| Groszpeter,A | ½, ½, 1, ½ | |||
| Sax,G | ||||
| Sax,G | ||||
| ½, 1 | Balogh,C | |||
| Horvath,C | ½, ½, 1, ½ | |||
| Horvath,A | ||||
| Horvath,A | ||||
| 1, ½ | Kovacs,G | |||
| Gyimesi,Z | 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1 | |||
| Kovacs,G | ||||
| Kovacs,G |
Here are all of Almasi’s games for replay:
Congratulations to Almási Zoltán! His play was very complex, with nice tactics. Kovács is a very good talent, an IM who could play for the bronze medal. It was a very interesting event.
Peter! Peter, you manage to cover what neither of the other ‘big three’ (as we say in English) ever indicate: quality, detailed coverage of key secondary chess events, in a close to real time environment, that is to say, without any significant delay. marvelous. bravo. warmly, david k seattle
Which other big three?
How come Leko and Polgar are not participating?
doom blase and pogie?
zippy bungle and george
Polgea: Lékó doesn’t participate, probably because he doesn’t see any challenge in playing with much lower rated opponents and wants to give some chances to the other players too, as for Polgár: she has two children and she has little time to play chess. As we could see Balogh was a worthy opponent against Almási, the championship wasn’t decided until the last minute.