Michael Adams

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For other people called Michael Adams, see Michael Adams (disambiguation)

Michael Adams

Michael Adams (born November 17, 1971 in Truro, Cornwall, England) is an International Grandmaster of chess. On the October 2006 FIDE rating list he is number nine in the world with an Elo rating of 2735, making him the English number one.

Adams won the British Championship in 1989 at the age of seventeen. He won it again in 1997, jointly with Matthew Sadler.

In 1993 he finished equal first (with Viswanathan Anand) in the Groningen tournament to determine challengers for the Professional Chess Association World Championship title. This took him to the knock-out stage, where he beat Sergei Tiviakov in the first round, but lost to Anand in the second. In 1994 he played in the Candidates of the FIDE World Championship, losing to Boris Gelfand in the first round.

In 1997, he took part in the FIDE World Championship, which, for the first time, was a large knock-out 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, knocking Adams out.

In the 2004 FIDE Championship, he again found his way through to the final, winning matches against Hussien Asabri, Karen Asrian, Hichem Hamdouchi, Hikaru Nakamura, Vladimir Akopian and Teimour Radjabov, before losing to Rustam Kasimdzhanov in the final (3.5-4.5 after rapidplay tie-breaks, the match having been tied 3-3 after the six standard games).

Among his other notable results are joint first at Dos Hermanas in 1995 (with Kamsky and Karpov), joint first at Dortmund in 1998 (with Kramnik and Svidler), and clear first at Dos Hermanas in 1999, ahead of Kramnik, Anand, Svidler, Karpov, Veselin Topalov, Judit Polgar and others.

In June 2005, Adams took on a computer program called Hydra in a six game match in London. Adams lost the match, drawing only the second game. The final score was Hydra 5.5, Adams 0.5.

In September 2005, Adams played for the World Chess Championship title, see FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. He finished in seventh place, with a score of 5.5. There were eight participants in the event.