Michael Adams

Michael Adams (born November 17, 1971 in Truro, Cornwall, England, UK) is a British Grandmaster (1989). His highest ranking is world number 4, achieved several times from October 2000 to October 2002. and he has achieved a peak Elo rating of 2755.

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

In 1980 Adams was spotted as a promising young player; this led to European Junior Champion, Shaun Taulbut, being provided as a chess coach. Adams won the British Championship in 1989 at the age of seventeen. Making only rare appearances, he won again in 1997, jointly with Matthew Sadler and for a third time in 2010. He convincingly won the 2010 British Chess Championships, held in Canterbury, where he finished with an undefeated score of 9.5/11. Adams also won the British Rapidplay Championship in 1995, 1996 and 1999.

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.