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:
[TABLE=405]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.
[TABLE=406]Here are all of Almasi's games for replay: