Michael Adams: Chess legend still going strong at 54 Today Sports News

Michael Adams is 53 — almost 54, he stresses — but continues to be a formidable presence in front of a chessboard. He is ranked 90 in the world in what is a very competitive, global sport that is getting increasingly younger. In 2023, the English Grandmaster won a strong London Chess Classic, which featured current World champion D. Gukesh. That year, he also won the World senior (above 50) title, which should, of course, come as no surprise.

When Adams, the former World No. 4 who came close to winning the FIDE World Championship in 2004, got an opportunity to play at the ongoing World Cup in Goa, he gladly took it. He sat down for an exclusive interview with The Hindu at Resort Rio in the North Goan village of Arpora after scoring a comfortable first-round victory. Excerpts:

What keeps you going?

Well, I don’t know. This is a good question. I am not entirely sure, actually. I think it was partly [due to] the pandemic when everything shut down. And I was kind of near the end of my playing career, but not completely there. So it was a bit frustrating to have this kind of time out then. To the extent that I decided I wanted to play a lot and do a few more years.

It was partly I wanted to be ready for the European Team Championship, which actually didn’t go that well for me personally, anyway. So I thought it was better to try and play a lot of games. Also, now there is a bit more chess activity in England. So I like very much that I can play events in England. I often play in Cambridge, the English Championship, British Championship, London Chess Classic. I have a few events in England and maybe a few elsewhere.

Sometimes I play the senior events as well, because I like the guy organising it, or I am quite friendly with some of the other guys on the team. So it is a bit of a social thing and it adds up to a lot of games. But it is not going to go on forever.

One of your contemporaries is here as FIDE’s deputy president, while you are here as a competitor. Did you have a chat with Viswanathan Anand?

I only chatted with him briefly. Of course, Vishy can still play anytime he wants to. The guy is amazing. I think people will only understand how incredible his strength is maybe in years to come. His level was amazing. But even more recently, when he was playing with the absolute top guys, he just plays and it is just like normal for him. There are some older guys here, like Vasyl Ivanchuk. He is still playing a lot. He is a really great player. I don’t really consider myself in the same kind of league. Also, there is Boris Gelfand, who continues to play. The guy challenged for the World Championship, an amazing player and he was just playing in the Grand Swiss recently. There is also Alexei Shirov, who too played very well at Grand Swiss.

I don’t think the guys who are now like 30 or so, I don’t think they will necessarily go to 40 and play. Chess is a lot more intensive, with computer preparation. It is a lot more difficult. It is a lot more work. And the intensity of the work is very high now for the strong young players. They work so hard, and from such a young age, whereas it is a bit more different for guys in their 50s, because we didn’t really have that computer preparation for a long time.

What made you play this World Cup?

I guess it will almost certainly be my last World Cup. But, never say never. It was really just a question of if I wanted to try one more time. There were a couple of guys who would normally be selected for England — David Howell and Gawain Jones. And they chose not to play. And then I was asked, and I thought, why not? I thought Delhi would be the venue, and it was one direct flight. And then later on, it was Goa, and I was not so happy.

You played the World Championship in Delhi in 2000, it was also a knockout format like this. You had a fine tournament until you ran into Anand in the semifinals.

I have some nice memories from Delhi, nevertheless. I won many matches; I beat some very strong players. It was disappointing to end the tournament like that after playing so well, but I had a lot of respect for Vishy; he was always a very difficult opponent for me as well. Well, at the start, I had an awful score; in the first 10 games, I was scoring hardly at all. It got better later and stabilised the score. And I think Vishy’s influence on the young Indian players is remarkable: not only the amazing way they play, but also the attitude and the kind of modesty, the politeness, just the way they behave is just, really, you can see that it is the standards he has set. They really follow his standards.

How do you look back at the 2004 World Championship final match with Rustam Kasimdzhanov, probably your best chance to win the title?

[After the classical matches were tied], I had some chances in the first rapid game. The win I missed in the sixth game, I just simply didn’t have much time. And I was checking that I was making a draw. It just didn’t occur to me to really look to play for a win. But I don’t regret that I didn’t win the World title. I achieved so much more than I expected. I am still ranked in the top 100 players at the age of 54. To me, this is amazing, because when I was maybe 37, I was thinking, well, I’m not sure I have that many years left, really. I was thinking maybe five years, maybe a little bit more.

Your thoughts on Daniel Naroditsky’s tragic death?

I don’t even know what even happened, actually, but this was very sad and just totally shocking and horrible. We have to have strict rules that you can’t make accusations against people publicly. There has to be some punishment every time this happens.

I don’t think it is normal in cheating that some people were cheating online and their identities are not revealed. There is so much publicity for this cheating. And I think it is very bad for chess because the story should be that 99.99% of players are very honest in a game where everyone has the capacity to cheat. And yet there is such a big fuss. We don’t worry enough about the rights of people who play honestly.

Published – November 08, 2025 12:22 am IST