ChessVibes welcomes Adams & Vachier-Lagrave as GM bloggers

We proudly announce two more grandmasters to our GM blogs section: French grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and English grandmaster Michael Adams!

When we launched our redesigned site, we also introduced something completely new: GM blogs. From the start you could follow Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), Dejan Bojkov (Bulgaria), Gawain Jones (England), David Smerdon (Australia) and Bartek Macieja (Poland), and now we've now added two prominent names.

Michael Adams

At 2733, Michael Adams is the highest rated player of the United Kingdom. He's currently the world's 18th player. His highest ranking is world number 4, achieved several times from October 2000 to October 2002. He has achieved a peak Elo rating of 2755.

Adams has achieved excellent 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.

Michael Adams has had a personal website for quite a while already and agreed to cross-post his blog posts at ChessVibes. His three most recent articles can easily be found on his profile page. In one of them, Adams writes something interesting about this year's British Championship (won by him):

I have never been too interested in trophies, but it seemed odd that there was nothing presented for the British Championship. I was told the British trophy was in for repairs last year, and I guess these were not an unqualified success as apparently it is now too fragile to be moved. In addition, for reasons that I’m sure make perfect sense but to me seem a little obscure, the playoff does not also decide the English Championship.

In his most recent post, Adams wrote about another tournament he won - the recent L.A. International - and even included a game fragment. Enjoy his blog!

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

At 2715, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is the highest rated French chess player and currently ranked 29th in the world. The 20-year-old completed his final grandmaster norm at age 14 years, 4 months, in 2005. At the Young Masters, Lausanne 2006 he was the youngest player invited and won the tournament with a TPR of 2630. Vachier-Lagrave won the 2007 Paris Championship with 7 points out of 9, and in the same year he also won the French Championship after beating GM Vladislav Tkachiev in tie-break match. In the main tournament he collected 7.5 out of 11.

His biggest success and breakthrough came in 2009 when he won the Biel tournament with 6 points out of 10 ahead of Alexander Morozevich and Vassily Ivanchuk. In the same year he also became World Junior Chess Champion. In 2010 he won the Crown Group of the Univé tournament in Hoogeveen, The Netherlands ahead of Alexei Shirov, Anish Giri and Sergei Tiviakov. In 2011 he won the French Championship again.

In his first blog post, Vachier-Lagrave writes about the recent exhibition matches in Clichy, France. The Frenchman naturally focuses on the experience of playing against Garry Kasparov:

The first very obvious thing is that even if it was only an exhibition, he definitely came with the idea of not losing, as was showing his determination and fighting will during the games, which was showed by his outstanding concentration, his displeasure at a move he had not expected and his general attitude dominating the board reminiscent of the time where he was world  #1. It also was pretty clear that he had been preparing for this match, and although I don't know how carefully, I think that he did more than some internet blitz.

You can read Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's first post in full here. Enjoy his blog!