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.
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". 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". 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.
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."
Read more about this topic: Ashot Nadanian
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