Zoltan Almasi, 33 and chess Grandmaster, was born in Hungary on August 29, 1976. His FIDE World Ranking as on May 2010 is No. 20 and Peak Rating is 2725 on May 2010. In 1993 when he was 17 years old, he won the Grandmaster title and in the same year he became Under 18 World Junior Champion.
Almasi has won the Hungarian Championship seven times between 1995 and 2008. He won the third Marx Gyorgy in 2005, his greatest victory, with a score of 6.5/10. In the same year, Almasi played against Peter Svidler in the World Championship at Mainz but did not win the match. He went on to win, in 2008, the fiftieth International Tournament held in Reggio Emilia, with a score of 6.0/9 with no losses and a performance of 2747.
Almasi belongs to a strong line of Hungarian chess players including the team that won the silver medal in 2002; he has always been a bit overshadowed by players like J Polgar and Leko. He was not noticed at a single digit age and glorified like his other compatriots, but only an incredible talent could have won the world under 20 junior championships at the age of 17 as he did in 1993.
Almasi is an aggressive and dynamic player who exclusively plays 1.e4 often with ambitious openings that go on to become exciting games. He has been very successful in the Fischer Random (chess 960) and won the strong FiNet chess 960 open in 2004 ahead of many GMs.
