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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:

Comments

7 Responses to “Almasi wins Hungarian Championship”

  1. Lajos Arpad on 25 September 2008 12:50 PM

    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.

  2. David K, Seattle on 25 September 2008 14:15 PM

    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

  3. Misja on 25 September 2008 14:42 PM

    Which other big three? ;)

  4. Polgea on 25 September 2008 15:38 PM

    How come Leko and Polgar are not participating?

  5. Ark on 25 September 2008 15:40 PM

    doom blase and pogie?

  6. Patzer on 25 September 2008 15:50 PM

    zippy bungle and george

  7. Lajos Arpad on 26 September 2008 16:07 PM

    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.

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