Michael Adams (chess Player)

Michael Adams (born 17 November 1971) is an English chess grandmaster and is a seven-time British Chess Champion. His highest ranking is world No. 4, achieved several times from October 2000 to October 2002. His peak Elo rating is 2761, the highest achieved by an English chess player.

He has achieved good results in World Chess Championship tournaments. Several times a World Championship Candidate, he reached the semifinals in 1997, 1999 and 2000. He reached the final at the 2004 FIDE Championship, narrowly losing out to Rustam Kasimdzhanov in the tie-break games.

Early career

Adams was born on 17 November 1971 in Truro, Cornwall, UK. By 1980, his chess talent had been recognised by the British Chess Federation, and he received high-level coaching from former European Junior Champion Shaun Taulbut and coaching from local chess champion Michael Prettejohn. In 1981, aged nine, Adams entered the Cornwall (County) Under-9 Championship and won it. He won the Under-13, Under-15 and Under-18 Championships at the same event. The last two contests clashed for one day, and he had to play them simultaneously, commuting cautiously between different rooms, some thirty metres apart.

In 1987, he took the silver medal at the World Under-16 Championship, held in Innsbruck, behind the Icelandic player Hannes Stefánsson. Later that year, at the age of fifteen, he became the world's youngest International Master (IM).

Two books co-written with his father, Bill Adams, ''Development of a Grandmaster'' (1991) and ''Chess in the Fast Lane'' (1996), discuss his early chess career.
In 1988 a television documentary was screened nationwide featuring Adams and Gary Lane. It is now regularly screened at chess film festivals.

National success

Adams' early endeavours were already beginning to pay dividends at the British Championship of 1987, where he gained his final IM norm and took the best junior prize. He proceeded to win the full Championship title in 1989, at just seventeen years old. He won again in 1997, jointly with Matthew Sadler. Then, after a lengthy break from the event, he returned to claim further titles in 2010, 2011, 2016, 2018 and 2019.

His win at the British Chess Championship 2016 with 10/11 tied the record score set by Julian Hodgson in 1992.

Adams also won the British Rapidplay Championship in 1995, 1996 and 1999.

World Championship candidate

Adams has performed strongly in several World Chess Championship tournaments.

In 1993 he finished equal first (with Viswanathan Anand) in the Groningen Interzonal tournament to determine challengers for the PCA World Chess Championship 1995. This took him to the Candidates Tournament matches, where he beat Sergei Tiviakov in the quarter-finals but lost to Anand in the semifinals.

He also qualified for the Candidates Tournament for the FIDE World Chess Championship 1996, losing to Boris Gelfand in the first round of matches.

In 1997, he took part in the 1997–1998 FIDE World Championship, which, for the first time, was a large knockout event, the winner of which would play a match against reigning champion Anatoly Karpov. This tournament included most of the world's top players (Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Gata Kamsky were the only notable absentees), and Adams won short matches against Tamaz Giorgadze, Sergei Tiviakov, Peter Svidler, Loek van Wely and Nigel Short, before coming up against Anand in the final round. Their four games at normal time controls were all drawn, as were four rapidplay games at quicker time limits before Anand won the sudden-death game, thereby eliminating Adams from the competition.

The 1999 FIDE World Championship resulted in another semifinal finish for Adams before losing to Vladimir Akopian. Nevertheless, he reached the semifinals of the 2000 FIDE World Championship before losing to eventual winner Anand. In the 2002 FIDE World Championship he won his first three rounds before being knocked out in the 'round of 16' by Peter Svidler.

Adams came closest to claiming a world title at the 2004 FIDE Championship when he reached the final, winning matches against Hussein Asabri, Karen Asrian, Hichem Hamdouchi, Hikaru Nakamura

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