Andras Adorjan- A True Creator!

Andras Adorjan is a supremely creative player, an innovator who influenced both Candidates' Matches and World Championship matches with his original ideas.

In this article we will take a look at one of his original ideas in the Queen's Indian Defense. The idea was so good, Viktor Korchnoi used it to defeat Kasparov in their Candidates' Match in 1983! And it was to be Korchnoi's ONLY victory against Kasparov in his whole career.

This idea is featured in Chapter 6 of the book "Black is OK!", published by Batsford in 1988. It was the first of 4 books with the theme being "Black is OK!".

In 1983, Adorjan introduced a new idea in the Queen's Indian Defense:

Adorjan writes:

"Everyone has his own ideas (or at least could have.....) All sort of ideas, both bright and silly. It is an open question what the value of an idea is and who can decide it. We are subjective creatures and just as predisposed to our spiritual children as we are to our real ones. It would be an obvious solution to say that the best test is the result in practice- if an idea is good then it will bring in victories (or at least reassuring draws) to its inventor. In general, this holds true. But not always!"

"In this chapter I shall describe the birth of an idea of mine, which has so far only brought me several defeats and some draws (I have never won a single game with it!) Nevertheless, when I first used it, although I lost the game, I won the most important theoretical novelty prize awarded by the Informant jury. And in the same year Korchnoi included it in his arsenal and won a memorable victory against Gary Kasparov himself in the very first game of their 1983 match in London."

"Well, let us put my paradox story on the road: once upon a time an idea struck me:"

"Well, this is it! According to the great and the wise, the moves ....e6 and ...g6 are unhappy bedfellows. This opinion may sometimes be right- though not always and not in this case. This chapter will give some examples. The idea leads to positions analogous to certain positions of the Grunfeld Defence (mainly the Exchange Variation); so one could call this the "Grunfeld Variation of the 4.a3 Queen's Indian."

Here is the game in which this novelty was "premiered".

And here is Korchnoi's victory over Kasparov, using Adorjan's idea!