Adorjan on the Keres Attack

Continuing with the 'Black Is OK!' (BOK) series, where the previous post was Adorjan's 'Presumption of Innocence', the image I used from Adorjan's mailing list included a condensed curriculum vitae for the author. Here is the same CV in text format. It's impressive enough, even for a world class grandmaster.

ANDRAS ADORJAN
International Chess Grandmaster
Olympic Champion (1978)
World Champion Candidate (1979-80)
3 times Champion of Hungary
The Player of the Year 1991
Garry Kasparov's assistant (1979-86)
Peter Leko's trainer (1996-99)
Ambassador of RAINBOW CHESS
Co-author of rock-opera '1956'

The first book in the BOK series (BOK1) is now 25 years old. How does the analysis hold up after so much time? The first chapter in BOK1, 'A Blow to the Keres Attack', overlaps my own opening repertoire, making it doubly useful for me to research. The diagram shows the position after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.g4 h6 7.h4, where 6.g4 starts the Keres Attack against Black's Sicilian Scheveningen.

The games in BOK1 all continue 7...Nc6 8.Rg1 h5. I have always continued 7...Be7 with very good results, so we have already diverged from my repertoire. After 8...h5, all of Adorjan's examples except one continue 9.g5. The one exception was taken from game one of the first Karpov - Kasparov match (1984-85, the 48 game marathon match), where Karpov continued 9.gxh5 -- 'an unpleasant surprise' according to Kasparov in part two of his 'Modern Chess' series.

As Kasparov's assistant during that period, Adorjan helped with the match preparation, concentrating on 9.g5. He attributed Karpov's move to 'an infallible sense of danger'. Nowadays, 9.gxh5 is the main line, probably due to the strength of Adorjan's system against 9.g5. Conclusion? Adorjan's recommendation is so good that players of the White pieces routinely avoid it. Black is better than OK!