Early Career
By 1980, Adams' chess talent had been recognised by the BCF and he received high-level coaching from former European Junior Champion Shaun Taulbut along with coaching from local chess champion Michael Prettejohn. In 1981, aged nine, he entered the Cornwall (County) Under-9 Championship and won it. At the same event, he won the Under-13, Under-15 and Under-18 Championships. For one day, the latter two contests clashed 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 Stefansson. 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.
Read more about this topic: Michael Adams (chess Player)
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