Ashot Nadanian (sometimes transliterated as Nadanyan; ; 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. 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. Since 2011, he has been a permanent second of Levon Aronian.
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". The sixth chapter of Tibor Karolyi's 2009 book Genius in the Background is devoted to Nadanian.
Early years
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. With the beginning of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1988, his family was forced to leave Baku and flee to Armenia.
Chess career
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. In 2014, playing board 4, he helped his team BKMA Yerevan to a silver medal in the Armenian Team Chess Championship.
His other performances:
Częstochowa Open, Poland, 1992: 1st–2nd; Tbilisi Open, Georgia, 1996: 1st; Pasanauri Open, Georgia, 1997: 1st–2nd; New York City Open Championship (Tournament B), United States, 1998: 4th–7th; Aeroflot Open (Tournament A), Moscow, Russia, 2002: 35th; Estrin Memorial, Moscow, Russia, 2002: 5th; Aeroflot Open (Tournament B), Moscow, Russia, 2004: 5th–15th; Goldberg Memorial, Moscow, Russia, 2004: 2nd–3rd; IGB Dato Arthur Tan Malaysia Open, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2006: 6th–10th; ASEAN Masters Circuit GMB, Tarakan, Indonesia, 2008: 2nd–3rd; IGB Dato Arthur Tan Malaysia Open, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2008: 3rd–7th; Korea Open chess tournament, Seoul, South Korea, 2008: 6th–10th; Singapore Rapid Chess Championship, Singapore, 2010: 2nd; Yerevan City Chess Championship, Armenia, 2011: 2nd–4th; Karen Asrian Memorial, Jermuk, Armenia, 2011: 7th–13th; Andranik Margaryan Memorial, Yerevan, Armenia, 2012: 2nd–4th; Armenian Rapid Chess Championship, Yerevan, Armenia, 2012: 7th–10th; Batumi Municipality Cup, Batumi, Georgia, 2016: 5th–8th; Armenian Rapid Chess Championship, Yerevan, Armenia, 2017: 6th–11th.
Playing strength and style
Nadanian reached his best Elo rating in July 1997 with 2475 Elo points. 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. His second norm came at Moscow 2004, where he scored eight points out of eleven with a performance rating of 2630. His United States Chess Federation (USCF) rating, based on nine games from 1998 New York Open, is 2655.