Ashot Nadanian

Ashot Nadanian (sometimes transliterated as Nadanyan; Աշոտ Նադանյան; born 19 September 1972) is an Armenian chess International Master (1997), chess theoretician and chess coach.

His highest achievements have been in opening theory and coaching.

Two opening variations are named after him: the Nadanian Variation in the Grünfeld Defence and the Nadanian Attack in the Queen's Pawn Opening.

He began coaching at the age of 22 and has brought up three grandmasters.

Nadanian was born on 19 September 1972 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, which then was part of the Soviet Union, to Sergei and Irina, both hairdressers.

He was taught to play chess by his father when he was seven.

His early coach was Rafael Sarkisov, who took him on as a pupil at Spartak in Baku.

In his article The Voiceless Old Man Nadanian recollects, that when he was nine or ten there were almost no chess tournaments in which young players could play with seniors and therefore he often went to the park near his house to play chess with older chess lovers.

He remembers that in one of these park-battles he played against a mysterious, silent stranger who turned out to be the highly respected chess champion Vladimir Makogonov.

In 1986 and 1987 Nadanian won the under-sixteen Azerbaijani championship.

Nadanian played in the Soviet Union Junior Chess Championships of 1987, 1988 and 1989, in the Armenian Chess Championships of 1997, 1998 and 1999 (7th–8th places), in the 32nd Chess Olympiad in Yerevan 1996, in the 13th European Chess Club Cup 1997, in the Zonal tournament in Panormo 1998, where he shared 7th–11th places out of 72 participants, in the European Individual Chess Championships of 2000 and 2014 and in the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships 2013 in Khanty-Mansiysk.

With the beginning of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1988, his family was forced to leave Baku and flee to Armenia.

Although a strong player who competed in the 1996 Chess Olympiad and narrowly failed to qualify for the 1999 FIDE World Chess Championship, he has never fulfilled his potential.

According to Valery Chekhov, Nadanian "possesses enormous chess potential, but he was not able to find enough time to work professionally on his chess."

Levon Aronian said that due to the situation in Armenia, Nadanian "was not able to display even one-tenth of his playing talent."

Due to his imaginative attacking style, Nadanian has been described as a "chess artist", a "brilliant eccentric", the "Armenian Tal" and "Kasparov's half-brother".

Nadanian reached his best Elo rating in July 1997 with 2475 Elo points.

He has coached the national teams of Kuwait and Singapore and was awarded the titles Honoured Coach of Armenia in 1998 and FIDE Senior Trainer in 2017.

His United States Chess Federation (USCF) rating, based on nine games from 1998 New York Open, is 2655.

Nadanian has an imaginative and adventurous style of playing, and even his mistakes, according to Tibor Karolyi, "contain elements of creativity".

He likes to create fresh, atypical positions straight from the opening, often employing bizarre maneuvers to achieve his goals.

Uncommon chess openings have always been a part of his repertoire (e.g. Sokolsky Opening, Budapest Gambit).

Kingpin magazine called him "a brilliant eccentric".

His best single performance was at Moscow Aeroflot Open, 2002, where he scored five of nine possible points (56%), exceeding his first grandmaster norm by half a point.

As an example of flank pawn advances versus a solid centre, John L. Watson in his 2003 book Chess Strategy in Action brings attention to the game Nadanian – Ponomariov, Kiev 1997 and calls it "almost satire on rule-breaking", as nine of White's first thirteen moves have been pawn moves and only one of those has been with a central pawn, yet Black's position was extremely difficult.

His second norm came at Moscow 2004, where he scored eight points out of eleven with a performance rating of 2630.

The 2005 World Cup winner Levon Aronian said of Nadanian: "His passion for beauty, his devotion to the romantic chess school has always been inspiring."

Grandmaster Valery Chekhov noted that "along with his positive qualities like very subtle understanding of dynamic positions, very good sense of initiative and quick thinking, Ashot’s play has a few negative facets like weak opening repertoire, bad defence, and the psychological element of the game as well."

Mark Dvoretsky in his book Chess Lessons: Solving Problems & Avoiding Mistakes wrote: "Ashot Nadanian is a multi-talented man, and I have read his book Moyi Shakmaty (My Chess) with great pleasure. He is an interesting player, and informative and objective commentator, and his writing style is "savory". While demonstrating his best games and unexpected and spectacular ideas he has carried over the board, Nadanian never tries to convince us that all his novelties are impeccably correct and supplies his readers with the results of an objective analysis."

Nadanian has contributions to opening theory, with two variations named after him: the Nadanian Variation in the Grünfeld Defence (after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Na4) and the Nadanian Attack in the Queen's Pawn Opening (after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 h6 3.c4 g5).

The first variation has been used by many strong GMs such as Viktor Korchnoi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Bu Xiangzhi, Alexander Riazantsev, Walter Browne, Smbat Lputian, Jonathan Rowson, Andrei Kharlov, Bogdan Lalić, Igor Lysyj, while the second has never enjoyed popularity among top-flight players.

Described by John Donaldson as "the ever inventive creator of novelties", he has made a number of other notable innovations, including:

Nadanian has contributed analysis to many chess publications throughout the world including the Chess Informant, New In Chess Yearbook, Europe Échecs, 64, Kaissiber and Szachy Chess.

He was a columnist for the Chessville.com website and has also written for ChessBase and the Armenian Chess Academy website.

The sixth chapter of Tibor Karolyi's 2009 book Genius in the Background is devoted to Nadanian.

Tibor Karolyi devoted a chapter to him in his 2009 book Genius in the Background and jokingly called him "Kasparov's Half-Brother", as Kasparov and Nadanian were both coached by Alexander Shakarov, and there were similarities in their playing styles.

In particular, Karolyi emphasizes their ability to implement effective ideas on the edge of the board, attributing this to the influence of their common chess "father".

Since 2011, he has been a permanent second of Levon Aronian.

In 2014, playing board 4, he helped his team BKMA Yerevan to a silver medal in the Armenian Team Chess Championship.

His other performances: