 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.