The 53-year-old is just one short of Jonathan Penrose’s record, while Bodhana Sivanandan became the youngest ever woman international master
Michael Adams edged nearer the all-time record for British Championship titles last weekend when the Taunton-based grandmaster won his ninth national championship at Liverpool.
Adams, who relaxes by watching cricket at Somerset’s county ground, has now equalled Henry Atkins’s total of nine championships from the first half of the last century, but remains one short of Jonathan Penrose’s 10 crowns from the second half. Adams’s first British title was in 1989 at age 17, still the youngest ever, but in the next 20 years he concentrated on the world championship, coming within a hair’s breadth of a reunification match with Garry Kasparov in 2004 before losing in the Fide final.
Starting with 2010, Adams made the British championship his priority, and he won five crowns in the next decade. Literally so, for the event trophy has been in the shape of a crown since the very first championship in 1904, and engravers now struggle to find space on it to add new names.
Between 2010 and 2019 Adams won the British title five times, setting up his current record attempt. He still retains his international ambitions, is the reigning world over-50 champion, and is competing in the strong Rubinstein Memorial beginning on Friday at Polanica-Zdroj, Poland.
