Grandmaster Michael Adams of England made it to the finals of the World Chess Championship with a 2.5-1.5 win over Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the semifinals at Tripoli, Libya.
Adams drew his fourth and final game of the semis against Radjabov last night, and the half-point was enough to assure him a berth in the summit clash where he will meet the winner of the other semifinals between top seeded GM Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.
Topalov and Kasimdzhanov will decide their fate in tie-breaker after all their four games ended in draws.
For Adams the plot could not have been easier laid out.
Since winning the first game, the Englishman was sitting pretty for a place in the final. He drew his next three games quite easily to maintain his one point lead over his rival.
In the fourth game, playing white, Adams was in for a surprise on the second move itself as Radjabov went for something completely unexplored. The middle game was fought on level terms though as Radjabov equalised easily with black.
The situation brought the best out of Adams and after trading of pieces at regular intervals, the Queen and minor piece endgame was never a trouble for the English.
The draw was agreed to in 44 moves.
The other game saw Topalov, playing with white, gaining too little from the opening and gradually Kasimdzhanov neutralised whatever white had hoped for in the middle game of the Bogo Indian defence. Though the game lasted till the 45th move, the outcome was never in doubt.
