Adams repeats as British Champion

Michael Adams won the 2011 British Championship on Saturday. The 39-year-old grandmaster defeated Nigel Short 1.5-0.5 in a rapid play-off match after the two had finished shared first with 8.5/11. Macauley Peterson reports from Sheffield, England.

General info

The 98th British Championships took place July 26-August 5 in Ponds Forge, Sheffield. The rate of play was 100 minutes for 40 moves followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, followed by 15 minutes to finish the game, plus 30 seconds increment move one. Alongside the Championship there were several side events including weekenders and rapid tournaments.

Report by Macauley Peterson

On the train ride up from Birmingham to Sheffield, you pass picturesque rolling hills, wheat fields and grazing cattle. Low-lying clouds lent a mysterious darkness to the landscape.

Sheffield itself has a bustling centre which somehow manages to be simultaneously both quaint and modern. The tournament was held at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre, a large complex sporting an Olympic size swimming pool, fitness center, and a convention hall where the Championship was staged.

When I arrived for the penultimate round, just before the end of the first time control, the last of the top boards was just finishing. I'd passed Nigel Short on his way out, having won his game to move back to equal first along side top seed Michael Adams, with Gawain Jones and IM Jonathan Hawkins trailing by only a half point.

In the last round both Short and Adams, who had already played their immediate pursuers in the 11-round Swiss, were paired with players in the 6.5 score group. Mickey was the odds-on favourite, with white against FM Yang-Fan Zhao, rated just 2444, while Short had to face GM Stephen Gordon "with the black bits" as Stevie would say in The Full English Breakfast. Short went for the ultra-unorthodox 1.d4 Nc6!? but Gordon avoided a main line Chigorin and quickly obtained the upper hand in a queenless middlegame.



As the round progressed, and all four top boards continued deep into the second time control, there were moments when it looked like we might see a four-way tie! IM Hawkins, who scored his second GM norm in the event, was pressing against GM Peter Wells, and Jones seemed to have an edge with queen and knights against queen and bishops in a closed game versus GM Nick Pert. But Wells held on, and Jones' game ultimately ran to a 144 move draw after an eight hour slog.

Short meanwhile defended a cramped position until Gordon finally conceded a draw, by which time Adams was in a drawish rook ending.

British Championship 2011 | Final Standings (top 30)

Rk	Name	Ti	Fed	Rtg	Pts	TPR
1	Adams, Michael	GM	ENG	2715	8.5	2713
2	Short, Nigel D	GM	ENG	2687	8.5	2726
3	Jones, Gawain C B	GM	ENG	2606	8.0	2658
4	Hawkins, Jonathan	IM	ENG	2457	8.0	2613
5	Howell, David W L	GM	ENG	2625	7.5	2612
6	Pert, Nicholas	GM	ENG	2555	7.5	2539
7	Gormally, Daniel W	GM	ENG	2519	7.5	2441
8	Gordon, Stephen J	GM	ENG	2533	7.0	2536
9	Hebden, Mark L	GM	ENG	2533	7.0	2385
10	Conquest, Stuart C	GM	ENG	2519	7.0	2477
11	Wells, Peter K	GM	ENG	2489	7.0	2479
12	Palliser, Richard J D	IM	ENG	2454	7.0	2372
13	Zhou, Yang-Fan	IM	ENG	2444	7.0	2369
14	Houska, Jovanka	IM	ENG	2418	7.0	2450
15	Buckley, Graeme N	IM	ENG	2380	7.0	2393
16	Bates, Richard A	IM	ENG	2373	7.0	2454
17	Williams, Simon K	GM	ENG	2528	6.5	2377
18	Summerscale, Aaron P	GM	ENG	2415	6.5	2450
19	Rendle, Thomas E	IM	ENG	2386	6.5	2391
20	Eggleston, David J	FM	ENG	2318	6.5	2288
21	Griffiths, Ryan Rhys	FM	IRL	2301	6.5	2350
22	Adair, James R		ENG	2212	6.5	2408
23	Lalic, Peter D		ENG	1978	6.5	2313
24	Hunt, Adam C	IM	ENG	2436	6.0	2352
25	Ledger, Andrew J	IM	ENG	2435	6.0	2346
26	Ansell, Simon T	IM	ENG	2410	6.0	2376
27	Kolbus, Dietmar	IM	GER	2335	6.0	2276
28	Webb, Laurence E	FM	ENG	2306	6.0	2194
29	Rudd, Jack	IM	ENG	2278	6.0	2264
30	Lalic, Susan K	IM	ENG	2277	6.0	2297

So the two rating favourites shared first place and had to contest a two-game rapid play-off, bright and early at 10:00 on Saturday morning -- not the favourite time of day for many players. Short later commented on Facebook, "when you have been performing (well) at 14.15 every day for 11 rounds and then you are suddenly asked to play under a different time-control at 10.00 am, you have to hit form instantly. I didn't. I slept very badly (in fact hardly at all)."



Adams, stoic as ever at the board, easily held with black in the first game, and won the second, to take the British title. Afterwards he summed up the fortnight thusly:

"The whole tournament was just really hard work actually, I mean nothing went smoothly really. It's funny because last year I was just winning game after game in like three hours barely...this year it was over seven hours to win this first game with white and just every game it was long, like five or six hours."

Adams noted that he was close to losing against Jones, and Howell, and also worse against Short. "It sort of looked not too bad, because I had this 7.5/9 -- it looks really pretty, but I had to work hard basically." Adams concedes that Short was having the better tournament, and that a rapid tie-break is a bit of a silly way to decide the Championship.

Third seed David Howell, the vanguard of the next generation, tripped up in round ten with a loss to Hawkins, and finished in 5th place.





IM Jovanka Houska, who was the rating favourite among the women by a wide margin, easily defended her title, finishing on seven points.

Look for more on the British Championship in the forthcoming episode of The Full English Breakfast at TheFEB.com and Facebook.com/TheFEB.

Selection of games

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Photos & report © Macauley Peterson

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Tournament | Playoff via TWIC